Worth Writing Down
by solnishka
Summary: Claire is a wannabe anthropologist with a dream of studying Common Brittonic, the language of the Celts of Roman Britain. Time travel will give her that opportunity, but at what cost? Rome is withdrawing, the Saxons are invading, and King Arthur is more than just a myth. Claire needs to find friends and find them fast, before the dangerous times she's now living in overwhelm her.
1. Chapter 1

Warning: yes, this is a "girl goes back in time" story. However, before you hit the back button, please understand that _**romance isn't the focus of this story**_. There _will_ be one (eventually), but it will be with... someone unexpected. This is the story of an outsider witnessing the changing cultural landscape of southern Britain with the withdrawal of Rome and onslaught of the Anglo-Saxons, and how the beleaguered native Britons are struggling to survive as a people. It's about how Arthur came to be king, how Guinevere's love of her people made her decide to be his queen, and how a bunch of Sarmatians decide that Britain is an island worth giving a damn about. Also, _**no knights are dying in this story**_. I'm trying to be as historically accurate as possible (as much as one can be historically accurate when dealing with the Arthurian myths) and would love your feedback. Thank you.

Actual warnings for this story include: canon-typical violence, mild language, and references to the fear of rape.

* * *

So. I have my backpack with a change of clothes, a tourist's guidebook to walking the path of Hadrian's Wall, my water bottle, some crackers in a plastic baggie, this journal, and two pens. Currently I am sitting in front of a campfire in the middle of a forest and being stared at by blue-painted people in leather clothing who might be historical reenactors gone rogue, or weird British survival cultists, or just a plain ol' pack of psychopaths. Regardless, they haven't tried to kill me yet, which is a good sign.

I'm writing down the day's events because The Blue Weirdos are apparently waiting for the arrival of their leader/wizard, a man they call Myrrdhin (Latinized name: Merlin). Maybe Merlin is actually sane, unlike the rest of them, and will rip off some quaint British sayings and then direct me towards the nearest bus station. The rest of these alleged 'Celts' are pretending not to understand English, and will only talk to me in thickly-accented Latin—my feeble attempts at Welsh did excite them a bit, however, and seemed to make them warm up to me somewhat.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. What I remember most about today prior to the The Event was the arguing.

"Claire, we need to go back."

"No, we need to _finish_," I gritted out, lowering my head against the rain. It was always raining, or about to rain, in England.

"Claire—"

"We are so close," I snapped, "_so close_ to Banna. And then the bus will take us back to the hotel in Gilsland village, and we can dry off and go to bed. This is our last day, Jake. We go back to the US tomorrow. We _have_ to finish." We wouldn't really finish, of course. The entire Hadrian's Wall Path was eighty-four miles long, and a two week vacation wasn't long enough to cram it all in. But our end point was the ruins at the Roman fort of Banna, and we could at least get that far.

Lightning split the cloudy sky off to the west, followed closely by a boom of thunder. Jake waited for the noise to end before wiping his nose and speaking: "This isn't safe; we shouldn't be out hiking in a thunderstorm."

"I don't care."

"Stop being an idiot! Do you _want_ to get struck by lightning?"

"We won't."

"How do you know that?"

"I just know. This is too important."

"…To you."

"What was that?"

"I said, 'to you.' This is important to you, not to me."

"Well, you didn't have to come."

Jake sighed. "Babe, stop being difficult. What's a few more miles? It's just some stacked rocks." He kicked the pile of tumbled stone next to his foot.

"It's Hadrian's Wall, you idiot. It was built more than a thousand years ago. We're going to finish the hike and get to the fort, and then we're going to explore the ruins just like we planned."

"In the rain?"

"Yes, in the rain."

Lightning flickered in the sky again, bigger and more dramatic than before. The thunder that followed almost instantly was louder as well.

"It's not safe," Jake repeated.

"Then go back to the bus on your own."

"I don't want you to be out in this weather!"

"I'll be fine."

Jake was quiet for several moments. Then: "Are you acting like this because you didn't get accepted into Oxford for your Master's program?"

"_Shut up_."

"You are, aren't you? You know you're never going to study the Bath curse fragment or any of that other 'Common Brittonic' stuff, you know you're never going to be a real anthropologist, you know you have to give up and go home, and you hate it. You're treating this like some grand old last hurrah before we get married and have kids."

"Shut up! Just shut up! I _will_ get accepted! Maybe not at Oxford, but there are other universities—"

"Why are you like this?"

My face and especially my eyes felt hot even beneath the cold rain, and my vision was blurring with tears. Jake and I were always fighting, and it always hurt. He never held back, especially when it came to my decision to put off having a family in favor of pursuing a Master's degree in anthropology.

"Because I don't quit," I growled, the effect of which was slightly ruined because I was choking back sobs. Damn him! Damn him when he was like this. I did not want to have children quite yet. I wanted to research, to learn, to discover old things and preserve ancient languages. I—

And then the lightning struck.

I don't actually remember very much of it. The afternoon was dim because of the cloud-cover, but then was suddenly bright. Really bright. I had just enough time to look up and see that the sky had gone flat white and feel the ground shaking beneath my hiking boots—and then it was over, just like that. I looked down and rubbed my eyes to get rid of the dazzle-spots that had blossomed across my vision, then looked around.

Hadrian's Wall was suddenly... bigger. Rather than a waist-height hump of stacked rocks, here was a fourteen-foot or so wall of fitted and dressed stone standing beside me. On the ramparts, men with helmets and red cloaks were looking down at me. I waved up at them.

"Hello?" I called out.

"_Apage!_" they called out in return, which was Latin for "go away!" oddly enough. I waved at them again, and they drew bows and pointed arrows at me. Bows and arrows! What was this?

"Are you reenactors?" I asked.

They called out something in Latin again. I can't remember the exact phrase now but it was to the effect of "this is your last warning" so I took the hint and raised my hands to show they were empty, then slowly backed away towards the forest in the distance—which also hadn't been there before. It was still raining, though. The red-cloaked men watched me retreat, then started pacing back and forth along the rampart.

I looked around again. The Hadrian's Wall path was nowhere to be seen, and surrounding me was a no man's land of scraggly, un-mowed grass and weeds. The forest was dark and ominous, but maybe it would be dryer under the trees. Armed with that hope, I grabbed the straps of my backpack and started walking.

Where was Jake? What had happened to us? Why were those historical reenactors so unfriendly? I didn't know what was going on, but I refused to be afraid. This was Britain, a densely populated island. If I kept walking in one direction for long enough I would stumble across modern civilization in less than a day. This wasn't like my native Virginia, where you _could_ get lost in the mountains and be eaten by a bear. There weren't any bears in Britain. Or wolves. Or even snakes with a venom powerful enough to kill an adult human.

I reached the trees and kept walking, now wading through underbrush. Bramble-thorns scratched at the fabric of my jeans, but couldn't penetrate it. It actually wasn't dryer under the trees, which was a bummer, but there was nothing I could do about it besides pull up the hood of my rain jacket. I kept one hand on my compass, and made sure that I was walking steadily east. I kept worrying that this little misadventure would make me late getting back to the hotel, which would in turn make me late for my flight home.

There was movement in the underbrush next to me. I stopped and looked, but saw nothing. Maybe it had been a rabbit or something.

_There are no large carnivores in modern Britain_, I mentally repeated to myself. I was perfectly safe.

A bush rustled on my other side. I whirled around, trying to see what had caused it, but again saw nothing.

"Hello?" I called out.

Someone said a phrase I didn't recognize, in... Welsh? And their voice came from... above me? What? I looked up, and saw perched in a tree a shirtless man covered in swirling blue paint holding a drawn bow. Nocked to the string was yet another arrow. What was with these people and arrows?

I slowly raised my empty hands. "Can you please help me?" I asked. "I'm lost."

"Do you speak the Roman tongue?" the man asked, in Latin.

"Yes, I speak that language," I answered. I had been taking Latin classes since freshman year of high school, and had won prizes in Latin-speaking competitions with my school.

"Who are you, and why are you here?" the man demanded, not lowering the bow.

"I am... a traveler," I answered. "I come from across the sea, and am lost. Could you please help me?"

"Are you Roman?" the man demanded.

"No. I'm American."

"...You are from Armorica?"

That was... part of northern Gaul, right? Yeah, yeah, Armorica was the Celtic name for the land between the Seine and Loire rivers, I remember that now. But it wasn't right.

"No, I'm from _America_," I repeated, stressing the word and saying it slowly. The man in the tree only shook his head, however.

"Perhaps one of us is pronouncing it wrong," the man said with surprising diplomacy. "Regardless, you are not Roman, and therefore not our enemy." He lowered his bow and gracefully climbed down from the tree to stand in front of me. "What is your purpose in Britain?"

"I seek..." I said, and trailed off. There was no way to say 'vacation' in Latin. "I am a scholar," I said eventually. "I seek to study the language of the British tribes and record it, so that it isn't lost to history."

The man snatched up one of my hands and examined it, probing my fingers for calluses. Finding none, he grunted in apparent satisfaction.

"You seem to be what you say you are," he said. "Come with me."

He turned and walked away through the underbrush, moving with a soundless hunter's tread. I followed him, blundering over roots and through thorn-bushes, making a godawful racket. He walked quickly, and we must have walked for almost an hour—maybe two miles, then. I was panting and sore-footed by the time we arrived in a clearing where a camp had been made. There were no tents, but a campfire flickered miserably in a ring of stones, hissing and steaming in the light rain. Sitting around it were a bunch of other blue-painted people I would come to dub The Blue Weirdos, most of them bearing medieval weapons. More bows were in evidence, but there were also spears, axes, and swords.

They saw me and asked questions in that Welsh-sounding language, and the man who had led me here answered in the same tongue. Room next to the fire was made, and I was ushered into a place. Through gesturing, they bid me to sit down with encouraging smiles.

"Why do you want to study our language?" the man asked.

"The Romans write everything down," I began, "and as such we can trace their history back for hundreds of years. We know their customs, their holidays, their cultural beliefs and religion, all because they wrote them down. But the Britons don't write anything down; they passed all their knowledge among themselves by word of mouth. I worry that someday there will be no Britons, and that means your stories will be lost. So they need to be written down and preserved and shared so that more people know them, even hundreds of years from now."

I was playing along with the fantasy that these people were real Celts, rather than just really dedicated reenactors. Regardless, the man laughed at me.

"This is Britain!" he said. "We are Britons! Do you think us weak and feeble, that we will be wiped out by a puff of air? We have survived generations of Roman rule; we can survive whatever comes next." His smile to me was pitying, with an edge of mockery. "You are foolish," he pronounced.

Except, I wasn't. This fantasy-land was... what? Sometime between 200 and 450 CE? As soon as the Romans left Britain, the Anglo-Saxons would arrive. And they would dub this land Angle-land, which would eventually morph into England. Their language, which is preserved most famously in the poem _Beowulf_, would dominate by the 6th century and be Old English, which would change into Middle English with Shakespeare and then the modern English spoken in England today. Remnants of Common Brittonic, the language spoken by the Celts of Britain, would survive in a handful of toponyms and through its descendants, Welsh and Cornish. But we don't really know the Common Brittonic language except for a handful of words and a single inscription. That's why I wanted to study it, to find new fragments and maybe, glory of glories, get the rudiments of a grammar system and dictionary.

But for these Celts... culturally speaking, the Britons of this island were doomed to be overwhelmed by the Saxons, and there was nothing they could do about it.


	2. Chapter 2

Never mind the clothing, the weapons, the usage of that Welsh-sounding language (I didn't want to just assume it was Welsh; it could have been Cornish or Manx)—the 'Celts' I was with sure as heck _smelled_ authentic. They stank as though they hadn't bathed at all for the past month. Within minutes of meeting them I was breathing through my mouth and wishing I was elsewhere. I was up against some _really_ dedicated reenactors.

"There is a village near here I need to travel to," I said, speaking to the only member of the little band who could speak Latin and therefore communicate with me. His name, he revealed, was Offyd. "It is called Gilsland. Could you direct me there?"

"Gilsland?" he repeated.

"Yes."

"I have never heard of a village called Gilsland," Offyd said.

"This is not funny," I snapped, starting to lose my temper.

"What?"

"I am willing to speak Latin with you and even engage in your charade of being Celts, but you go beyond discourtesy. I'm lost, I'm tired, and I'm wet through and hungry. I need to get to Gilsland so that I can go home. The village can't be more than a few miles away from here; stop pretending you don't know where it is."

"Woman, _you_ are the one being discourteous," Offyd said. The other 'Celts' sitting around the fire couldn't understand us, but they could detect the anger in our tones. They looked between us, concern written on their faces and their hands straying towards their weapons.

"I am not! Do you think it is amusing to drag people into your little game?"

"Game? _Game?_ You think resistance to Roman oppression is a _game_?" Offyd demanded, jumping up from his seat. I stood up too and planted my hands on my hips, glaring at him. Offyd continued: "If you were not a woman and unarmed, I would strike you for your insults. As it is, Myrddhin must decide what to do with you."

"I am leaving," I announced. I adjusted the straps of my backpack and turned away from the fire.

"No, you will not," Offyd said. Something in his tone made me stop and look over my shoulder. The other 'Celts' had stood up, and were drawing knives and nocking arrows to the strings of their bows.

"Take another step, and you will die where you stand," Offyd said. "Come back to our fire and sit down."

Slowly, I turned back around and resumed my seat. After a moment, Offyd and the others sat down too, though the knives remained drawn. They glinted in the firelight and looked wickedly sharp.

Alright, so these so-called Celts had gone from 'dedicated reenactors' to 'crazed cultists', and Merlin was their leader. They were _threatening me with weapons_ now. Never mind my flight, as soon as I got away from these people I was going straight to the police and making sure they didn't kidnap anyone else.

_If_ I got away from them. Who knows, maybe they would try to sacrifice me to some god they'd made up.

The tentative warmth of earlier had completely left the atmosphere surrounding the campfire, and had been replaced by hostility. I could feel the glares of the other 'Celts' be turned on me as Offyd translated what I had said.

There was nothing to do now but wait for Merlin to arrive. I pulled my backpack into my lap and rummaged through it for my journal and a pen, and eventually pulled my rain jacket over my head to shield the book from the rain as I wrote. I recorded everything that had happened, and the light was just starting to fade when Merlin arrived.

There was no fanfare. One moment, it was just me and a half-dozen of The Blue Weirdos, and the next moment Merlin was striding among us with an entourage of 'Celts'. A stunningly beautiful but also blue-painted young woman walked by his side. He conversed briefly with Offyd, then turned to me. Feeling ridiculous, I sheltered my journal under my shirt and adjusted my rain jacket back to its normal position.

"Is it true you are from Armorica?" he asked in Latin.

"No," I said. "I am from _America_. It lies across the sea to the west."

"So you are from Éire," he said, saying 'Ireland' in Irish.

"No, I come from beyond Hibernia," I replied, using the Roman name for the other island.

"There is nothing beyond Éire, only salt water with no end."

"Why are your eyes different?" the young woman demanded.

I sighed. Here we go. I have heterochromia—one of my eyes is blue, and the other is brown, and I am _sick and tired_ of getting comments on it. Usually it's only small children who are blunt enough to ask about it, though.

"I was born with different-colored eyes," I said. "It runs in my family; my maternal grandmother had odd eyes as well. It doesn't affect my vision."

The young woman exchanged a glance with Merlin.

"Offyd says you are a scholar of languages," Merlin continued, "and that you have come to Britain to learn and then write down our tongue."

"That is true."

"You have come at a terrible time. War is brewing. It would be best if you leave with the Romans to the south."

"Do you mean the red-cloaked people on top of the wall?" I asked.

"Yes," Merlin said.

"They threatened me with bows when I hailed them, and do not seem friendly."

"You can go nowhere else," Merlin said. "To the northeast, the Saxon fleet swims the North Sea, and the Romans control the Channel."

"She could go west," the young woman said.

"Gwinwyfr," Merlin said, "that is a long and perilous journey."

Wait, did he just say _Guinevere_?

Merlin continued talking, trying to explain that the journey to the other side of the island even at its narrowest point was dangerous in these times, and that even if I survived that far I would still need to brave the pirates of the Irish Sea and then round the peninsula of Cornwall to get to a landmass that wasn't associated with Britain. I was barely listening; I was still looking at the young woman and trying to understand why she would be named Guinevere.

She was... young. Late teens, early twenties at most, with fierce dark eyes and darker hair. Strong cheekbones and a pointy chin defined her face, giving her a haughty look, and she wore leather clothing like the rest of the 'Celts'. At her belt were two long knives and a quiver of arrows, and strung over her shoulder was a bow.

_So one reenactor's really gone for that Arthurian persona_, I thought, mentally shaking myself. Get over it! None of this was real, remember?

But it was starting to _feel_ real. Merlin practically oozed charisma; it was hard not to be drawn into his web of... well, lies. All I _really_ needed to do was figure out which direction Gilsland was in and keep walking. There would be none of this 'trek the whole damn way across the island and then cross the Irish Sea' business.

"I will take her," Gwinwyfr/Guinevere announced. She turned to me. "I am on a mission to recover the shards of the Cauldron of Rebirth, and must travel far to the west. You may come with me, if you wish; your eyes will bring us luck. I will teach you our tongue."

Look. I should have said no. I really, really should have said no. I think Merlin's charisma got to me, and Gwinwyfr/Guinevere's fierce eyes. Also, the offer to be taught a new language was tempting. But really... I didn't want to leave Britain with Jake and go home to America just yet. For a few minutes I found myself envisioning an adventure worthy of Bilbo Baggins—to be yanked out of my comfortable life and thrown into a manageable amount of danger, to gain friends, help slay a dragon, and return home wiser and wealthier than when I had left. What was timing a flight in comparison to that? I could always get another ticket.

"I will come with you," I said. "My name is Claire McLane."

And so I damned myself.


	3. Chapter 3

Here's what's happened in the three days since I've written in this journal.

Gwinwyfr/Guin—actually, let's just call her Guinevere for simplicity's sake—took me under her wing. She travels with two other female companions, who are named Blodwyn and Owenna. Neither of them speak Latin, and I distinguish them by their hair color: Blodwyn is blonde and Owenna is a redhead. They are all covered in swirls and spirals of blue paint, which is more accurately a dye made from the woad plant. Incidentally, that blue dye is what marks them as rebels, because the Celts that have submitted to the Roman yoke forego their traditional body paint and have adopted unadorned skin, like the Romans.

The reason I'm hating this trip is that we have no transportation. We've been traveling for three days, and everything so far has been forest. I'd initially thought that these 'Celts' were just leading me in circles through a small area, since modern Britain doesn't have much in the way of large forests (the only one I can think of is the Forest of Dean), but I've been checking my compass religiously and we've been headed steadily westward. And you know what kind of terrain is bad for horses? Forest. They're traditionally plains-dwelling animals, and with no roads through the underbrush other than narrow, twisting deerpaths it's apparently easier to go on foot.

Look, I weigh 223 pounds (that's 101 kilograms) and am _not_ a lithe little huntress like my 'Celtic' companions. I was willing to hike sections of the Hadrian's Wall ruins because the terrain was gentle and it had been my dream to do so for about two years, but prolonged treks just aren't for me. I sweat and pant and have a terrible time of it with my aching feet, and judging from Blodwyn's annoyed glances am probably slowing down the party. However, Guinevere seems totally serene about the issue, and the other two 'Celts' are taking their cues from her. She must be the leader, then.

Guinevere lived up to her promise of teaching me Common Brittonic. I knew now it wasn't Welsh or Cornish; my infatuation with the Insular Celtic language group meant that I could count to three in either language, and the numbers that Guinevere taught me weren't _un, dau, tri_ (Welsh) or _onan, dew, tri_ (Cornish). They were _oinos, dau, tris_, which (wonder of wonders) actually was Common Brittonic—but these words were among the handful available to modern scholars; everything else I had to assume she was making up. Regardless of whether I was learning a real language or not, Guinevere set me on a semi-grueling schedule of learning ten words + one phrase every day, and since there was nothing to do but walk and think I was actually sticking to it.

First day: _tree, branch, root, leaf, brown, green, sky, sun, day, night + "how are you?"_ These were all things that were readily available around us.

Second day: _moon, star, human being, foot, arm, hand, leg, head, hair, nose + "my name is [blank]"_

Today: _please, thank you, you're welcome_ (technically phrases but whatever), _hello, goodbye, eyes, ears, short, tall, fat + "please help me"_

And so it continues. For the previous two days I had been too tired at sunset to help set up camp or even write in this journal, but I'm starting to become accustomed to this type of traveling. I actually have some energy tonight, and so am writing down everything. Guinevere, Blodwyn, and Owenna are all pretending not to watch me, which is becoming unnerving.

"Is something wrong?" I eventually asked, looking up. I was writing by the flickering light of the campfire.

"What is in that book?" Guinevere demanded. Everything about her is... not harsh, but certainly intense. I have a feeling it would be a good idea to stay in her good graces, and so am playing along with the idea that she's a real Celt.

"It's my diary," I said. "I write down everything that happens to me, to make sure I don't forget."

"You can't remember things?" Guinevere asked, wrinkling her nose in either confusion or disdain.

"I remember things perfectly well, I just want to make sure that all the details are recorded. Tell me—can you remember what you ate for breakfast seven days ago?"

"No."

I flipped through the pages, found the relevant entry, and said, "I had fried eggs and black pudding. Books like mine are memories. If I die, my memory won't die with me, but will live on whenever someone reads this."

"Why would someone care about what you'd had for breakfast, though?"

"Maybe someday, hundreds of years from now, someone will want information on what kind of food their ancestors ate," I said, and shrugged.

Guinevere propped her chin on her fist and thought, gnawing on a hunk of roast rabbit. Blodwyn had downed the animal with a sling several hours ago. She had just fitted a stone into the cupped section in the middle of the strip of leather, twirled it around her head to build up momentum, and then let fly. There was a thud, and when Blodwyn went to retrieve her rock she came back with a dead animal as well. She'd tied the rabbit to her pack by its hind feet, and as soon as we stopped to make camp she had skinned the animal and removed the organs to prepare it for roasting. I could have gone the rest of my life without knowing what rabbit entrails looked like, but now I do. I had to swallow hard several times to stop myself from throwing up as I watched her.

"You are writing about _us_?" Guinevere demanded, dragging my mind back to the subject at hand.

"Yes."

"What are you saying?"

Oh, heck, what was I supposed to say? Journals are supposed to be _private_. I couldn't just tell her that I had dubbed her reenactment club The Blue Weirdos. But then, I had a clever thought. I offered Guinevere the journal. "You can read it, if you want," I said. The journal was written in modern English; if Guinevere chose to keep up her charade of being a real Celt, then she wouldn't be able to understand what I had written.

Guinevere took the book and flipped through it, squinting. Eventually, she made an irritated noise in her throat and handed it back to me. "You use the Latin alphabet, but that is not Latin," she said.

"It's English, my native tongue. You can read?"

"A little bit."

I shuffled to the side and drew a Latin phrase in the dirt I thought she might like: _sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc_. Guinevere stared at it hard for several minutes, moving her lips as she sounded out the words, then smiled as understanding dawned. "We gladly feast on those who would subdue us," she read aloud, and giggled. She translated for Owenna and Blodwyn, who smiled wolfishly.

"Why are you seeking the Cauldron of Rebirth?" I asked. I was familiar enough with British mythology to know the legend: an enormous magical pot created by the giant Llasar Llaes Gyfnewid that could revive corpses placed inside it, which was destroyed by a hero named Efnisien.

Guinevere frowned and grew serious. "The Romans have killed many courageous Britons," she said, "and there is a Saxon horde arriving on our northeastern shore. My uncle, Myrddhin, wishes to rebuild the Cauldron and use it to give life to our fallen heroes for the coming battles."

"Do you know where it is?"

"It was destroyed in Ireland," Guinevere said, and shrugged—apparently she couldn't narrow down the location any further than that. She continued: "Myrddhin is sending emissaries to the other tribes, the ones that aren't already allied with us against the Romans, to bolster our army."

"Will Rome send an army to fight the Saxons?" That was what the Empire usually did when one of their territories was threatened.

"No. Rome is withdrawing from Britain; they will be gone by the end of autumn, which is when the Saxons will launch their attack. We have until that time to rebuild the Cauldron—if the tribes will not rally around Myrddhin or Arthur, then perhaps they will rally around Boudicca of the Iceni."

Boudicca of the Iceni tribe had led a rebellion against Rome around the year sixty CE, and poisoned herself rather than be captured when the rebellion failed. Boudicca was a real historical figure. But...

"Arthur?" I asked. "Do you mean Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table?"

Guinevere nodded. "The very same," she said. "His mother, Igraine, was a Briton; hopefully he feels loyalty to his mother's homeland. He and his Sarmatian Knights are great warriors."

This reenactment club was apparently bigger than I thought. From the looks of it, they had a timeline of events they wanted to act out. This 'Arthur' was apparently... what, Guinevere's boyfriend? The blue-painted woman sitting across the fire from me, wearing leather clothing and bedecked with weapons, was a far cry from what I pictured when I thought of the Queen of Camelot.

I didn't know what to say to that, and went back to writing. After a time, the three 'Celts' banked the fire and retired to their bedrolls. This area was allegedly controlled by forces friendly to Merlin, so no watch was posted. I stared into the faintly glowing coals of the fire, frowning.

This adventure was... well, an adventure, and I was almost enjoying myself. I've officially missed my flight home, and Jake is going to be _such_ a bitch about that when we meet up again. I have no cell phone reception here, which is weird, and my parents are probably worried about me. I wish I could tell them I was alright.

Oh, oh, there's also The Bathroom Issue, which is that _there aren't any bathrooms here_, or toilet paper. You never realize how much you love toilet paper until there isn't any. When one of us needs to go, the whole group stops and waits for the person to do their business in the bushes, which is disgusting. I've been camping with my family before, but only in official campgrounds—there are bathrooms there, not just with toilets and toilet paper but also _showers_. I desperately want to take a shower. I don't stink as badly as the 'Celts' do, but I'm sure I'm getting there. My hair and face feel greasy, my clothes are developing sweat stains under the arms... it's horrible.

And yet, writing this down, I actually... I like Guinevere. She's kind to me, unlike a lot of the thin, pretty girls I grew up with, and if it weren't for the fact that she's a crazed reenactor I think I'd like to be her friend. Blodwyn and Owenna are nice too, though I can't talk to them. This experience will be something I'll never forget; I mean, how many people can boast that they were kidnapped by crazy reenactors and got to go on a camping trip across Britain?

I just hope that nothing bad happens.

* * *

**Source for the Welsh, Cornish, and Common Brittonic numbers** in this chapter is Omniglot. I can't provide a link, unfortunately. I tried to reconstruct the URL in different ways, but Fanfiction kept deleting my attempts.

Because we (as in, 21st century humans) don't actually know the Common Brittonic words for Claire's vocabulary lists, I'm choosing to just use the English words instead. If I could provide the words, I would. We also don't have many examples of Common Brittonic names, so Owenna and Blodwyn (and Offyd from Chapter Two) are non-anglicized Welsh names.


	4. Chapter 4

_rabbit, deer, knife, hedgehog, sword, shield, danger, safety, peace, war + "Who are you?"_

_bow, arrow, sling, helmet, shirt, pants, shoe, sock, house, forest + "How do you say [blank]?"_

We have now been traveling for five days.

"Claire, can you start the fire?" Guinevere asked.

"I don't know how to do that," I confessed, watching as the other woman gathered deadwood around the clearing we had chosen to make camp in.

"Well, it's time you learned how," Guinevere said. "You need to help us more."

"Show me what to do," I said, kneeling down in the dirt next to Guinevere. She handed me a chunk of flint and a nodule of steel, and showed me how to strike them together to produce sparks. The sparks fell onto the twigs she had gathered as tinder... and promptly died. I frowned and did it again, and again, and again, until finally a spark caught on one of the twigs and sent up a tiny plume of smoke.

"Now blow on it—_gently_," Guinevere instructed. I crouched down and did so, and the spark grew to a tiny flame. I cautiously fed it a dried leaf, which caused it to grow a bit larger, and then it latched onto another twig and began to burn in earnest. Guinevere nodded her approval, which made me beam with pride.

"Are your family of high status?" she asked suddenly.

"Uh, no," I answered. The McLane family was composed of average, middle-class Americans living in the suburbs of Charlottesville, Virginia.

"Then why do you not know how to make a fire?" Guinevere demanded.

"...I guess we are high-ranking," I said, which was sort of a lie—but it was easier than trying to explain that people don't use flint and steel to make fire anymore. I was certainly an educated woman who could speak multiple languages and had never done a day's work of manual labor; by the standards of most women of Roman Britain, that marked me as a high-status individual.

Owenna returned from her scouting mission then, and spoke to Guinevere. I caught the words for 'people' and 'village', but nothing more.

"What was that?" I asked when Owenna was finished.

"There is a settlement nearby," Guinevere said, "with a Roman villa. There are very few Romans north of the Wall; we should investigate."

"I thought you didn't like Romans," I said.

Guinevere scowled. "The Romans have _enslaved_ my country," she said. "They believe they are superior in every way—language, religion, culture. But they're wrong. This is Britain, and the only people who deserve to live here are Britons." She turned her fierce dark eyes on me, a reflection of the flames dancing in their obsidian depths. "Where do you belong, Claire?"

"I..." I said, and trailed off. "I don't know," I finished lamely. I had grown up in America, but I wasn't a very patriotic person. Not even the fourth of July excited me. The early history of a country not my own had bewitched me from a young age, and I had been obsessed with the past rather than my own surrounding present. I felt a sense of belonging in libraries and universities, but very seldom elsewhere.

"You must find a place where you belong," Guinevere said.

There was no fresh meat tonight. We ate hard oatcakes from our packs for dinner, washed down with water from our canteens. I pulled out my journal and wrote down the day's events, which was mostly just walking through forest, as well as the day's vocabulary. I was starting to feel... troubled. We _should_ have passed a road by now, or a town, or heard a plane fly overhead. But instead everything was just... wilderness. It was almost as if I was actually back in Roman Britain.

But that was impossible.

At dawn on the next day, Blodwyn shook my shoulder to wake me up, and we dined on more oatcakes and a minty tea that Owenna brewed for us. We each went into the bushes to do our business, with Guinevere taking the longest. I had asked two days ago if she was alright, because she was taking so long in the bushes, and Guinevere had laughed and explained that she was on her period; she needed to stuff her underwear (and apparently she only wore what a modern woman would think of as underwear when she was on her period) with absorbent rags, and to bury yesterday's rags.

Come to think of it, _my_ cycle was coming up as well. I'd need to get rags of my own if this journey took much longer.

We started walking through the forest again, now heading northwest as Owenna directed us towards the Roman estate. I remember it being a nice day, warm with enough of a breeze to stir the leaves overhead. Sunlight filtered through the canopy and cast dappled shadows over the four of us.

"Can you fight?" Guinevere asked after several minutes of silence had passed.

"No," I answered.

She pursed her lips, thinking, then said: "if it comes to violence at the Roman's lair, run eastward as fast as you can. If any of us survive we will find you. If not, continue east and give news of our death or capture to my uncle."

"I... will do my best," I said. Guinevere, Blodwyn, and Owenna were all just reenactors, right? Nobody would _really_ get hurt; there was nothing to worry about.

We arrived at the edge of the forest and crouched down in a clump of bushes. Spread out before us was a small, grassy valley that had been cleared of trees. In its center was a white stone villa in the Roman style: a two-story, square building with a tiled roof surrounding a hollow middle, where a roofless plaza for private eating and relaxing would be. A tree-lined gravel avenue led up to the gate, which was wide enough to drive a car through. It felt almost modern. Surrounding the villa, however, were a huddle of thatched wooden hovels and scraggly fields among which people and animals moved about.

"Do you see the guards?" Guinevere asked. She pointed, and I saw people in brightly-glinting chain mail standing at the gate.

"We must approach from the east, where the trees are closer to the edge of the fields, so they don't see us," Guinevere said.

I nodded. We crawled out of the bushes and made a wide circle around the edge of the valley. I sniffed, and smelled... a campfire? Smoke? Something burning, anyway. I told as much to Guinevere, who opened her mouth to reply, but then Blodwyn hissed a warning.

Someone called out in Common Brittonic, and Guinevere replied. A small, scrawny man stepped out from behind a tree, pointing a pitchfork at us. Owenna already had her bow drawn and an arrow nocked to the string. Guinevere motioned at her, and the woman lowered her weapon.

Guinevere and the man spoke for several minutes, and midway through the conversation the man relaxed his grip on the pitchfork and lowered it. His shoulders slumped as he spoke; he seemed tired and miserable. He wore a filthy oversized smock and baggy pants, and was barefoot. His face was the gauntest I had ever seen outside of photos of concentration camps from the 1940s.

Guinevere conferred with Owenna and Blodwyn, then turned to me. Her face was grim when she spoke: "This man's name is Irfon. He is a charcoal burner and serf for Marius Honorius, the Roman in the stone house. He says the Roman deprives them of food and is very cruel to them."

"What will we do?" I asked, tearing my eyes away from Irfon. You couldn't fake a face like that; this man was genuinely starving. I've heard of reenactors doing crazy things in the name of historical accuracy, but _starving themselves?_ That was too much. I immediately unshouldered my backpack and handed over several of the oatcakes Guinevere had given me as traveling supplies. Irfon said a word I recognized as thanks and starting eating.

"_We_?" Guinevere echoed, arching an eyebrow. "_You_ can do nothing; you are a scholar with no experience in the ways of war."

"We can't just leave them!" I insisted. "They're starving!"

"I agree," Guinevere said, "but Owenna, Blodwyn, and I are not enough to fight the Roman's guards." She huffed in frustration. Blodwyn said something, and she and Guinevere talked. Owenna chimed in from time to time. All I could do was stand off to the side, feeling useless with my language barrier.

At last, Guinevere turned back to me. "We will wait until dusk, then go to the village. Irfon will go ahead of us and make introductions to the village elder, a man named Dyfed, who will meet with us. Dyfed does not like the Roman, so he should be receptive to our plans."

"Which are?"

"The Roman has Christianized these people, and convinced them that true-hearted Britons who fight for their country are damned to Hell. When we meet with Dyfed we will do our best to convince him that that is not so. If we are lucky, these people will head east into the forest and find my uncle's people. If not..." she trailed off and shrugged. "We leave on the morrow and continue our quest for the Cauldron."

"Okay," I said, which caused Guinevere to give me an odd look—the English word was meaningless to her. I corrected myself with a Latin agreement, and she nodded to me.

Irfon went back to tending his charcoal heap, which was giving off the campfire smell I had detected earlier. It was a vaguely conical pile of logs covered with a thick layer of branches. Irfon would watch the smoke coming from a hole in the top of the heap, and then use his pitchfork to poke holes in the branches to allow oxygen to fuel the fire. If the smoke changed in a way he didn't like, he would use a pair of leather mittens and re-seal the holes to limit the flow of oxygen. I watched him for a while, but quickly grew bored and reached for my journal.

"Don't do that," Guinevere instructed when the edge of the book peeked out from my backpack.

"Why?" I asked, but obeyed.

"It's bad enough we must speak the language of his oppressors in front of him, and that you wear such outlandish clothes—there's no need to make him distrust us more with odd activities."

"Writing isn't _odd_," I said, starting to feel offended.

"Among the Christians, only priests and the wealthiest of men can write. I don't want our charcoal burner to think this is a trap."

"As you wish," I said, and sat down to wait with Blodwyn and Owenna. The two women were sharpening their knives and seemed utterly engrossed in the activity.

Irfon tended the charcoal heap for a little while longer, then apparently decided it was stable enough that he could leave it for a short time. He strolled out of the forest and walked down the grassy slope to the village, with the three 'Celtic' women watching him like hawks. If he had gone to the guards we would have left immediately, but instead Irfon only mingled with the other villagers.

With the charcoal burner gone I was allowed to pull out my journal and write. I clicked my pen, which made Guinevere turn her gaze on me.

"How was that made?" she demanded, gesturing to it.

"It's a pen," I said.

Guinevere snorted. "I can see that," she said, "but what is it made of?"

"Plastic," I answered.

"Plasticus?" Guinevere echoed, saying the Latin word that had mothered the English one I'd used. It was an adjective and meant 'shape-able'.

"No, the material itself is called plastic. I don't know how plastic is made, but it can be shaped more easily than wood or metal and is very common in my homeland." It would be common here too in sixteen hundred years or so.

_If_ this was real. _If_ I was actually back in the past—which I wasn't. My surroundings were so immersive that I was starting to forget that.

Guinevere took the pen and clicked the nib in and out of the holder, then drew a swirl on her wrist. Curiosity satisfied, she handed it back.

"A clever tool," she said. "You must be of high status indeed to have such implements."

"They're actually very cheap where I live," I admitted. "Everyone has them."

Guinevere tilted her head to the side like an inquisitive bird. "What land are you truly from, then?"

I sighed. "Would you believe me if I told you that I was born more than a thousand years in the future, on a continent that hasn't been discovered yet, and that I was transported to your time through means I don't understand for a purpose I'm not aware of?"

Guinevere looked at me for a long moment, blinked, and said, "Yes."

"...Really?"

"Yes," she repeated. "Your clothing is different from any that I have ever seen, made from materials I do not know, and your possessions are equally strange. Perhaps you were transported here through magic, to aid us in our fight for a free Britain."

It was my turn to snort now. "Magic doesn't exist," I said.

"It must," Guinevere insisted. "How else could you have come here?"

I could only shrug uncomfortably at that. Guinevere leaned closer to me, her fierce eyes boring into mine.

"It is your destiny to be here, at this place and at this time. You may not understand it yet, but your fate is sealed."

I don't think she meant it darkly, but I had to suppress a shiver nonetheless.


	5. Chapter 5

This is my first chance to write all day, and I'm grabbing it with both hands. My 21st-century pen is lost to me now, so I'm writing with a new pen made from a cut-down goose feather. I have to keep dipping it in a well of ink, which is made from a mixture of glue, water, and soot (the ink, not the inkwell), and it keeps leaking and splattering over the page. I'm getting the hang of it, however.

The worst has occurred. Guinevere is lost to me, Blodwyn is dead, and I am a prisoner.

Irfon returned shortly after my conversation with Guinevere, and I had to put away my journal. It was only midmorning, but we would have to wait until dusk to fall before moving, therefore losing a day of travel. Guinevere, intense and apparently impatient person that she is, began to pace back and forth. I sat down at the base of a tree and took a nap, which would have been a surprisingly pleasant experience if not for the root digging into my back. Time passed. I worked on my vocabulary words as noon came, and then went, and the afternoon dragged on. The sun grew ruddier as it sank lower in the sky, turning the color of blood as it neared the horizon. The air slowly came alive with night insects and the hooting of the first owls.

At last, it was dark enough that Irfon, myself, and the three 'Celts' could move down the grassy slope and into the village without being noticed by the guards. Lights twinkled in the windows of the stone villa, but the village itself was utterly dark. A woman was waiting for us in the shadow of one of the hovels and waved to us as we approached; I only noticed her at all because of the movement. She ushered us inside, where Dyfed was waiting.

The entire hovel couldn't have been bigger than my freshman dorm room at UVA, but it housed a family of six—and now four more guests. A tiny fire flickered in the center of the dirt floor, warming the underside of a small kettle in which a watery stew simmered. The possessions of the entire family were ranged around the single room, along with its inhabitants: an older man who must be Dyfed, a younger man and woman, and three grubby, pre-adolescent children.

I have no idea what they talked about in that little hovel. Guinevere did most of the talking, which made her unavailable as a translator for me, so I sat quietly between Blodwyn and Owenna and tried not to worry about catching lice from these people. They looked _filthy_, especially the children—and so very, very thin. Shouldn't these kids be in school, rather than reenacting? And shouldn't they at least be fed properly? It's one thing for an adult to engage in self-destructive behavior in the name of a LARP or something, but kids? That was out of line.

The woman was murmuring to one of the girls, who couldn't have been more than eight or so, and the girl got up and left the hovel. I didn't think much of it at the time, but several minutes later I heard heavy footsteps outside the door.

Owenna hissed and drew her knife.

The door burst open! Armed guards were suddenly shouting and waving torches and swords. I couldn't understand what they were saying. I was knocked aside as Blodwyn jumped up and attacked a guard with a knife. I saw... I saw... the guard stabbed her. His sword went inside her midsection and came out her back, wet and shining with blood. Blodwyn screamed in agony, and then the guard pulled it out of her and kicked her down. She fell to the dirt floor, writhing in pain, and the other guards stepped on her as they came into the hut and began dragging people outside. I crawled to Blodwyn's side and put my hands over the wound, trying to staunch the bleeding. Her blood was actually _warm _against my skin, and sticky. And there was so much of it. It just kept coming out of her.

I screamed as a guard grabbed me by my hair and dragged me out of the hut. People were waving torches and shouting in a mixture of Common Brittonic and Latin. I cowered on the ground, trembling and staring down at my bloody hands.

It was _real_. It was all _real_. Blodwyn had been stabbed for real. And now she was dying for real too.

"We need to get an ambulance!" I shrieked in English. "Blodwyn is hurt! She's dying! We need to get an ambulance!" I was hysterical and not even aware that I was crying. A guard backhanded me across the face, and I went quiet and sat numbly on the ground.

Owenna had been subdued, and was lying curled in the fetal position on the ground and groaning softly. Guinevere was still fighting, however. She kicked, clawed, and scratched at the guards like a crazed wild animal as they forced her to the ground and then held her down.

A short, fat man wearing a toga approached. This was Marius Honorius. He was scowling and shouting at the villagers, who were lined up in front of their hut. He spoke to them in their language, berating them, and Dyfed was thrown at his feet. The old man tried to sit up to look Marius in the face, but a guard put a boot on his neck. He shouted at them some more, and Blodwyn was dragged out of the hovel. Her limbs flopped around haphazardly, like a puppet with its strings cut, and she wasn't making noise anymore. I think she was dead.

Guinevere and Owenna were approached by two men in brown robes who looked like monks. They looked at me as well, but quickly focused on the two 'Celtic' women. They began chanting Latin prayers over them as the guards dragged them into a little stone building huddled against the side of the villa.

And then, the only one left was me.

"What are you?" Marius demanded in Latin, naked disgust in his voice.

"My... my name is Claire..." I squeaked out, also in Latin. His eyes narrowed at that.

"Strip her," Marius commanded. I shrieked as guards approached and pulled my rain jacket and shirt off, so that I was only wearing my pants and a bra. Marius stared at me as I covered my chest with my bloody hands and arms. He saw no woad designs on my skin, however.

"So you can speak a civilized language," he said.

"Yes," I squeaked.

"Are you a Christian?"

"Y-Yes."

"Prove it."

"_Pater noster, qui es es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum_..." I began. I had been forced to memorize this in Sunday school as a kid. Marius glowered at me as I recited the entire prayer, his chubby fists planted on his hips. When I finished his expression didn't change.

A teenage boy and a woman were standing off to one side, watching the proceedings with solemn dark eyes. The woman cautiously approached Marius and murmured something in his ear, which caused him to look at her. After a moment, he nodded to her and then turned back to me.

"My wife needs a new maid," Marius said. "You will serve her."

There was nothing I could do but nod my acquiescence. The woman beckoned to me, and I walked dumbly to stand in front of her. She led me through the gate to the villa, then inside, to a small set of rooms. There was a bed, a table with a basin, a curtained window, and not much else. At first I thought this was to be my quarters, but then realized I was being foolish—even accommodations as spartan as this were too sumptuous for... whatever I was now.

"You may wash," the woman murmured.

I washed Blodwyn's blood off my hands in the basin, watching the water turn pink and feeling tears continue to roll down my face. I just couldn't stop crying! I think it was the shock.

"My name is Fulcinia," the woman said. "I am sorry for your friends."

"What... what will happen to them?" I asked.

"They will be tortured until they confess to worshiping Satan, and then they will be killed," Fulcinia said. "I'm sorry."

"They don't worship Satan."

"Eventually, they will be made to say so."

I stared at her in horror, trying to process this even as Blodwyn's death kept rehearsing itself in my memory. I couldn't shake the image of that bloody swordpoint emerging from her back.

Whatever this was, it wasn't reenacting.

Fulcinia gave me a shapeless brown dress to wear, which was tied at the waist with a rope belt. It was made of scratchy wool, felt uncomfortable, and smelled like the sheep it had come off of, and I instantly missed my jeans and cotton tee-shirt—but those had been taken from me, along with all my other possessions. She led me to a grass-stuffed pallet in one corner of the room, then caught hold of one of my hands. She stroked my palm with slender fingers, feeling the softness there.

"You are noble?" she asked.

"Yes," I said, because it was easier than saying no.

"This will be difficult for you," Fulcinia said. "You must pretend to be my maid, and serve me. I will teach you what to do."

"I... I need to go east," I said.

Fulcinia shook her head. "Guards patrol the fields at night," she said. "They would catch you."

"There's a man, his name is Merlin. One of the women I was traveling with, her name is Guinevere. She's his niece. Merlin is a powerful... a powerful war-leader. He could rescue her. I need to get to him. Please, help me get out of here." I was babbling in my panic and struggling to regain my composure.

"Hush!" Fulcinia said. "Keep your voice down! If anyone hears you talking like that, you could be given to the priests as well. I know you want to help your friends, but only God can save them now."

Someone knocked at the door. Fulcinia froze, but then the door opened. The teenage boy from earlier poked his head in. "Mother?"

"Alecto, what are you doing?" Fulcinia asked.

"Do you need anything?" the boy asked.

Fulcinia stepped away from me, putting me on display to her son. I did my best not to squirm uncomfortably under his scrutiny; I had never liked being looked at, especially by men and teenage boys. To Alecto, I must have appeared a fat, odd-eyed woman wearing an ill-fitting peasant's dress, cowering in silence next to his mother.

"Alecto, this is..."

"Claire," I volunteered. Was this boy similar to his father, Marius? Would I need to fear him as well?

Alecto nodded to me. "I am sorry for your friends," he said, repeating his mother's sentiment. The sympathy in his eyes was genuine—I wouldn't have to fear him as I did Marius.

Alecto left after that introduction was made, and Fulcinia bid me lie down on the pallet and try to sleep. She retired to her bed, and the night was quiet. I couldn't sleep, however. For one thing, the pallet was very thin and the floor beneath it was hard tile. For another, I was keyed up and frightened from the night's events. Every time I heard someone walking in the hallway outside Fulcinia's room I would startle to full awareness and lie frozen in the dark with my heart thundering in my chest. What if it was a guard? What if Marius changed his mind and wanted to give me to the priests as well? What would happen to me?

I was in real danger now, and surrounded by people who would kill me if I did something wrong. Fulcinia and Alecto, I think, would help me try to survive, but they were clearly powerless next to Marius. I laid quietly in the dark, thinking of Blodwyn's death and worrying about Guinevere and Owenna, until the gray pre-dawn light peeked in through the window. It was only then that I could fall into a light doze.

Fulcinia woke me soon after that. I startled awake and flinched away from her hand on my shoulder, causing her to withdraw. She was already dressed and had her hair in pinned back from her face with gold combs. Was I supposed to have helped her with that?

"Go to the kitchen and fetch my breakfast," Fulcinia instructed. "The cook's name is Gnaeus; he will have it ready for you. Take something for yourself as well."

"Should I call you _domina_?" I asked, standing up. I felt tired and sick.

"That would be best. Now go."

I went. The inside of the villa was lavishly decorated. The floors were composed of mosaics with scenes from the Old and New Testaments, and the walls were decorated with murals. The windows had actual glass panes in them, though it paled in comparison to glasswork from the 21st-century—the glass here was murky and clouded, and had the occasional bubble in it. Graceful bronze braziers were already lit by other servants and gave off light and heat, and the furniture I saw was intricately carved.

The kitchen was _probably_ on the ground floor. I descended the stairs and wandered around until the floors changed from mosaics to plain tile and the walls were unadorned. There was shouting coming from up ahead, and I passed through an archway into a hot, sweaty room that could be nothing but a kitchen. Fires burned in several hearths. A skinned goat was roasting in one, and in another a pot giving off savory smells was heated. Three thin, Celtic-looking men were singing hymns as they worked at a table preparing vegetables and meat, and were being berated in Latin by a small, darker-skinned man waving a knife.

"You! What are you doing here?" he demanded, rounding on me.

"Are you Gnaeus?" I asked, taking an involuntary step backwards.

"Yes! The one and only Gnaeus of Rome! Now what do you want?"

"I... I came for Fulcinia's breakfast," I said.

Gnaeus harrumphed and gestured with the knife towards a side table, where a tray was waiting. It held several sheets of bread, along with a small pot of honey and chopped fruit. I took it and fled the kitchen.

There was a trio of guards walking in the hallway outside. My breath caught in my throat and I lowered my eyes to the floor, pretending not to see them as I scurried past with the tray. Was one of them the one that had killed Blodwyn? I retreated to Fulcinia's quarters as quickly as I could, where she was waiting for me.

"Good work," she said, seating herself at a small table and beginning to eat. I realized I had gotten nothing for myself as my stomach growled. Fulcinia sighed and handed over some of her bread.

"Thank you," I murmured. There was no second chair at the table, so I ate standing up.

"Did you know that the cooks, um, the ones working for Gnaeus, did you know that they sing?" I asked eventually.

"Yes," Fulcinia said. "They do that so Gnaeus can be sure none are stealing food."

"Oh. Is Gnaeus really from Rome?"

"Yes. He was part of my dowry to Marius. We were wed when I was... fifteen."

I nodded. Fulcinia finished her meal and ordered me to return the tray to the kitchen, which I did. When I returned for the second time that day I found her in another small room, working on a tapestry on an enormous loom. Weaving and saying prayers was apparently how she spent her time, and I mostly sat in the corner and tried not to bother her. It was boring, but I had a lot of thoughts.

I needed to escape and save Guinevere. But how? I couldn't fight the guards, and running away to get Merlin's help would be difficult.

I took a break from thinking to fetch Fulcinia's midday meal (a platter of cold meat, cheese, and imported olives), and snagged some bread for myself to eat as well. Alecto came in and ate with his mother, and they talked about Alecto's studies with his tutor and Fulcinia's weaving. I sat in the corner, unimportant and ignored.

"Do you know how to wash clothes?" Fulcinia asked after I had returned the tray and Alecto had gone.

"No," I said.

"Take my chitons and bedding to the fullers; they will show you what to do."

I gathered up the clothes and bedding in a basket. Unlike my own brown wool dress, Fulcinia wore and slept on white linen. She directed me to leave the villa and go to the nearby wooden building that stank of urine, which was... not promising. I hefted the basket on my hip and went, however.

Leaving the villa and going out into the village, I saw the woman who had told the little girl to fetch the guards. She was milking a goat in the middle of a muddy field, wearing a dress similar to mine. Her hands were thin and raw as she milked, and her nose was running. Had she betrayed us to Marius in the hope of receiving money or food? Did she care at all that her words had led to Blodwyn's death?

She looked up and caught my eye, and we stared at each other for a moment. I tore myself away and followed my nose towards the burning stench of ammonia, squelching along the muddy track that rambled between the huts. Marius' serfs had clearly constructed these for themselves with only rudimentary tools. More well-built structures were a mill for grinding grain, a granary for storing food, and anything that served Marius' agricultural purposes. Eventually, I found the wash-house (or _fullonica_ if you wanted to use the Latin term).

From my Latin classes I knew, in theory, what a _fullonica_ was—it was the Roman term for a laundromat. You took your clothes there, had them soaked and worked about in urine to get rid of dirt, and then they were rinsed clean and hung out to dry. White clothes had an extra step, and were suspended over vats of sulfur so that the fumes would whiten them. Why they didn't use soap I wasn't sure; Pliny the Elder wrote about it, so they certainly knew what it was and used it for washing their bodies, but for their laundry the Romans preferred urine.

I breathed through my mouth as I got close, and my eyes started to water once I entered the building. It was a long, low structure full of tubs of urine, in which serfs with their dresses or trousers pulled up stamped and kicked about their master's clothing and bedding. I stared, taking everything in and wondering what to do.

An older woman cautiously hailed me in Common Brittonic. I haltingly returned the greeting and asked what her name was, and received an answer: Hywela. I introduced myself, and she revealed a gap-toothed smile.

Talking in Latin would probably frighten her. I took the unoccupied tub next to Hywela and dumped Fulcinia's things into it, then pulled off my socks and modern hiking boots (Hywela looked at those very intently) and held up the hem of my long dress. I started stamping and kicking like everyone else, feeling foolish and vaguely disgusted with myself. The smell of ammonia was so powerful that my eyes were watering badly.

Hywela tried to talk to me, but I couldn't understand her. Using the phrase Guinevere had taught me, I got her to name everything around us. I think she understood then that I didn't know much of her language. Eventually, Hywela motioned for me to get out of the tub and gather up the urine-soaked laundry. She did the same thing, and I followed her to where a little stream with a rocky bed flowed through the valley. She dumped the clothes into the stream, letting the flow of water rinse them clean, and I copied her. Downstream from us, I watched in horror as a young girl collected a bucket of water and took it into a hut—to make soup, to drink, to wash with, whatever. The water was _contaminated_; she would get _sick_.

But Marius' laundry was apparently more important than the health of his serfs.

Because Fulcinia's things were white, Hywela showed me a domed wicker structure constructed of open squares, over which she draped the linens and chitons. On the ground in the center of the dome was a vat of sulfur, which reeked of rotten eggs.

Next to the dome was a rubbish heap. A flash of color caught my eye, and I saw that someone had dumped my rain jacket and backpack here. I rushed over and opened my backpack, extracted my journal, and stuffed it into the bosom of my dress for safekeeping. I hurried back to the villa, dumped the journal on my pallet, and then had to rush back outside—it had started to rain again. I collected Fulcinia's things before the sulfur fumes could really whiten them, then brought them inside. They were hung up to dry in an empty room, and I returned to Fulcinia's quarters.

She had picked up my journal and was flipping through the pages, frowning. "What is this?" she asked.

"My diary," I answered. "I saw it in the rubbish heap."

"I don't recognize this language."

"It's the tongue of my homeland."

"You must be homesick, then," Fulcinia said, and offered it back to me. I had to restrain myself from snatching it out of her hands.

"Yes," I answered.

"Alecto can give you quills and ink, but you should keep that out of sight," Fulcinia said. "You might get taken to the priests if anyone thought you were writing spells or heresy."

"I'll be careful," I promised. Alecto did in fact bring me a quill and ink, and I spent the rest of the afternoon learning how to write with the new tool. It's better than just staring at the wall and thinking in circles. I read over what I had written several times, trying to devise a way to rescue Guinevere.

And realized that a way to do so had been sitting right under my nose.

_Charcoal_ from the charcoal burner, _sulfur_ from the laundry, and _saltpeter_... well, you could get that from urine too, and when those three things were combined you had gunpowder. I didn't know the exact ratio of ingredients, but if you mixed them together in large enough quantities and set fire to them you could get one hell of a firework.

If I couldn't break down the door to Guinevere's prison, I'd blow it up.


	6. Chapter 6

Guinevere's talk with Dyfed was not without effect. Several days after I recovered my journal, a family was caught trying to escape into the eastern forest. They were all taken into the little stone building where the priests extracted their confessions, even the young boy. The guards had to drag them into the building one by one, with the woman wailing and screaming the entire time. All I saw when I peeked into the open doorway was a set of stairs leading down; there was no sign of Guinevere's presence.

Why had I latched onto this idea of rescuing her? Why did it matter so much to me? For all I knew, Guinevere could be dead already.

Except, I knew she wasn't. Guinevere was a fighter—not just physically, but emotionally as well. I was sure she would hold out against countless tortures and be ready and raring to go when I blew open her prison. I just needed to get to her... and have horses available so we could flee quickly, and be packed and ready with food, and countless other preparations.

Plotting our escape gave me hope. I still couldn't look Marius in the eye on the rare occasions we came into contact, but I was no longer trembling and cowering when he or the guards passed me. I felt... brave.

Sulfur was easy to obtain; I just snagged little crumbles of it every week when Fulcinia bid me do her laundry, and hid them in a pouch between my breasts. It was hard to be sneaky about it, and I think Hywela knew what I was doing, but I couldn't speak enough Common Brittonic for her to demand an explanation and she didn't report me to the guards.

Charcoal was even easier. Hywela's husband was the blacksmith, a man of some status whose name was Gwilym. He stored charcoal near his forge, and I was given a few lumps when I pointed and asked.

Saltpeter, though... that was difficult. All I knew about the ratio of ingredients for gunpowder was that it was more than fifty percent saltpeter, which of course was the one ingredient I had trouble getting my hands on. I'd read an adventure book as a teenager where the main character had to make gunpowder, and I could remember that the author described saltpeter as a white, flour-like substance. I knew it could be made with very little in the way of technology by processing manure and urine in a specific way for more than half a year, but I didn't have that kind of time.

And then I noticed the rime of 'salt' on the laundry tubs. It was right above the level of urine, and was sticky, like damp flour, when I touched it one day. I stared at it, then quickly worked my way around the tub, scraping it into my little pouch. After that I made an effort to do Fulcinia's laundry in each and every tub, rather than just the one next to Hywela, and collect all the material that I hoped was saltpeter.

I conducted a small test when Fulcinia was out of her quarters, by mixing a tiny amount of all three ingredients together on the floor and then lighting it with a splinter from the brazier in the corner. It exploded with a flash and a small crack and left a black stain on the tile, which I had to hurriedly clean before Fulcinia's return. But the test result was promising; I did have gunpowder.

I just needed a lot more than what was contained in my little pouch.

Time passed on Marius' estate. Weeks, then months. Summer grew to its height and settled into the dog days of August. It was hot as Hell, and a drought settled onto an otherwise rainy island.

A messenger arrived on a horse one day, bearing a missive from one of Marius' friends south of Hadrian's Wall. It contained birthday wishes for Alecto, as well as a promise to attend the celebrations later in the month.

"What celebrations?" I asked.

"Alecto is coming of age," Fulcinia explained, working at her loom. "He will don the _toga virilis_ and be sent away for military training." Her hands shook faintly as she worked the threads, and with a start I realized that Fulcinia was crying. I went to her side and put a hand on her shoulder, which made the older woman startle. She looked up at me with wet eyes, then lowered her head and covered her face with her hands.

"He is all I have," Fulcinia whispered. "He is the only one who talks to me, apart from you."

"But Marius—"

"Ignores me, unless it is to summon me to his bed," Fulcinia said. She wiped at her eyes and I fetched her a cup of water to drink. Fulcinia drained the cup and seemed to have regained her composure by the time she handed it back to me.

"I have had more children than Alecto," she told me then. "But they were all girls, and Marius ordered that they be exposed."

"Exposed? What does that mean?" I asked, praying that my suspicions were wrong.

"He ordered they be left in the forest to die," she said bleakly. "He did not want them to grow up and have their dowries be a drain on Alecto's inheritance. I pray... I pray to God every day that the Celts found my daughters, and raised them as their own. Or maybe they are living in the village as serfs."

"Maybe," I echoed, not wanting to disrupt her fantasy. Poor Fulcinia—powerless and forced to do nothing as her children were murdered. What kind of strength did it take to endure that?

Well, I wasn't planning on finding out. I _would_ rescue Guinevere. I'd spit in Marius' eye and have her safely back to her uncle before midwinter.

But in the meantime, life went on.

Hywela took over tutoring me in Common Brittonic. She taught me more words and phrases, and I started to get a grasp of grammar and how the more common verbs were conjugated. I worked hard, and frequently found myself tightening my belt—stress and diet change were causing me to lose weight, and I went from 223 pounds to something closer to 180. I was still a fat, odd-eyed woman, but I had some muscle now and was putting it to use. I did laundry, fetched meals, cleaned Fulcinia's quarters, and in my moments of downtime walked the village with Hywela and learned as much as I could. I learned how to conceal things in my sleeves and the folds of my dress, and frequently gave bread and bits of cheese to the village children to eat.

I didn't trust the villagers enough to talk about my plans, however. As much as I wanted to help them be free of Marius' cruelty, I could remember how they had betrayed Guinevere, Owenna, and me, and caused Blodwyn's death. I was alone on my quest and had no real allies.

Marius' family had access to a bathhouse, where water was heated in enormous cauldrons and then poured into steaming pools for the family to bathe and relax in. As a servant I was barred from using it, but since I stank of urine after laundry day Fulcinia would permit me to heat a kettle of water and wash myself in the privacy of her quarters once her clothes and bedding were clean. The harsh lye soap I used irritated my skin, but it was better than being dirty. Hywela thought I was odd for bathing—what was the point, after all, since your body would only get dirty again—but I didn't care about alienating her in that respect. I wanted to be clean.

The only time my pouch of gunpowder was separated from me was when I bathed, and I spent every moment worrying that Fulcinia would notice and ask what it was. I couldn't think of a decent lie to use, and more than that I didn't _want_ to lie to her. The pouch was starting to bulge as its contents grew, and soon it would be noticeable under my dress. I needed to find a larger container if I wanted to build up enough gunpowder to free Guinevere, but I couldn't think of a way to conceal something bigger.

One day, Fulcinia put a hand on my shoulder as I wrote in this journal. I looked up at her, and she spoke: "Alecto's birthday is a week from today. You must ready my good chitons and polish my jewelry."

"As you wish, _domina_," I said. I did as she asked. The 'good chitons' were dyed a deep wine-red and had gold embroidery along their edges, which meant they didn't require the sulfur bleaching treatment. The jewelry was gold as well, made with twisting, serpentine designs. It was all very pretty and made Fulcinia look like a queen, but I knew Marius hadn't given her the jewelry to make her happy—he wanted her to be a pretty ornament at Alecto's birthday banquet, a way for him to show off his wealth to his friends.

Marius' friends arrived in a host of carriages and wagons soon after, along with their servants and bodyguards. Suddenly, the villa went from a quiet, reclusive place to bursting with people and noise. Rooms previously empty were given over to the guests, and Fulcinia had visitors in the form of other Roman wives and their daughters. Among them were Cornelia Adepphia and her twelve-year-old daughter, Druscilla—Alecto's betrothed. She was a fidgety child with thick black curls and bright eyes, shyly peeking out from behind her mother. I smiled at her, and she ducked into the safety of her mother's arms and hid her face from me.

"Your maid has strange eyes," Cornelia commented, walking over and inspecting me. She took my chin in her hand and turned my face from side to side.

"Yes, it is a very rare condition," Fulcinia said. We had agreed that it would be better to pretend that I barely understood Latin, so that I wouldn't be required to talk much.

"How much did she cost?" Cornelia asked.

"Nothing. She was a prisoner of the Celts and is happy to be back in Roman service."

"Is that right?" Cornelia asked, looking at me.

"Yes, _domina_," I said, making my American accent as thick as possible. Cornelia lost interest in me after that and seated herself in a chair, happy to gossip with Fulcinia about children and husbands.

"It's a pity you have no daughters to keep you company," she said, putting an arm around Druscilla's shoulders. "I would be bored to tears with only a single maid for companionship."

What a bitch. I glanced at Fulcinia, but the other woman seemed completely serene as she sipped her cup of watered wine. "God has seen fit to bless me with a son," she said. "I am happy with our Lord Father's choice."

Cornelia changed the subject after that, and my attention drifted. The new Roman woman reminded me of Jake, in particular his pettiness. I hadn't thought about Jake since being taken captive by Marius. I did wonder what happened to him, but for some reason I didn't miss him the way I thought I would. We were engaged, and yet... well, we had always been fighting. It was nice to get away from that.

Dinner was served, but not by me. I wasn't pretty enough to be worth showing off to the guests, so my duties ended after bidding farewell to Fulcinia as she swept off to the plaza with Druscilla and Cornelia. The Roman men would recline on couches and the women would be seated on padded chairs, and they ate oysters and veal and drank the finest wine that Marius could afford. There would be a ceremony conducted by one of the priests, and then Alecto would put on the _toga virilis_ that marked him as an adult Roman.

I helped clean up after the banquet, sweeping the plaza of oyster shells and bits of discarded food. As I did so I noticed several empty wine amphorae that were being taken away to be thrown into the rubbish heap. They were tall clay pots with handles on the sides, and each probably held up to three gallons of wine when full. The guests must have been thirsty. I took one and brought it to Fulcinia's chambers.

Fulcinia was sitting quietly at her loom with her hands folded in her lap. She was looking at her current tapestry, a scene of the villagers working the fields and the bounty they harvested. It was pastoral and quaint, but I knew the reality now: starved serfs forced to give up most of the food they grew, with barely enough seed left over to re-plant their fields in the spring.

"Fulcinia," I said softly, using her name rather than her title.

She turned and looked at me.

"I have a secret," I confessed. "I have... a way to free my friends. But I need time, and I need a way to store my secret so that nobody can find it."

Fulcinia's eyes widened. "Here?" she demanded, gesturing about the room.

"Yes."

"This is too dangerous. If my husband were to find out—"

"He won't. He won't recognize my secret. And nobody comes into these rooms but you, me, and Alecto."

"I do not want to be a conspirator!" she hissed, standing up from her loom. There was panic in her voice.

"You won't be," I assured her, speaking gently. If this went wrong and Fulcinia became too frightened, she might turn me over to Marius in order to save herself. That would be the end of my plans to free Guinevere and escape this horrid estate. "I just need a place to store this," I said, hefting the empty amphora.

"Why do you need wine?" Fulcinia asked.

"It's empty," I told her. "I need a container for my secret."

Fulcinia shut her eyes and grimaced, clearly working out her decision within herself. At last, she opened her eyes again. "Very well," she said. "Put it in the corner over there."

"Thank you, Fulcinia."

"Your friends... you must love them very much, to risk so much for them."

I shrugged, then surprised myself: "I have nothing to live for but them," I said. And that was true. I had accepted that I had gone back in time to the fifth century CE, and that everything of my 21st-century life was now lost to me. My dream of being an anthropologist, my family, even my unhappy engagement might as well have been as far away as the moon. The only things I had left were my life and my tentative friendship with Guinevere.

I might as well go out with a bang.


	7. Chapter 7

The gunpowder was transferred from my little pouch to the wine amphora, and I could now grow my supply. I learned that Gnaeus kept saltpeter in the kitchen, and used it for curing meat and, on special occasions, for chilling wine when ice wasn't available—like in the height of August. He had used some for Alecto's birthday banquet. Ever alert to people attempting to steal food, it was all but impossible to slip some saltpeter out of the kitchen under his nose. I learned to work around him, however, by claiming that Fulcinia wanted a cool cup of wine on certain evenings.

More time passed. August gave way to September, and my own birthday came and went. Fulcinia was the only one I told.

"May the Lord bless you on the day of your birth," she said, giving me a rare smile. "How old are you now?"

"Twenty-five," I answered.

"Were you married, in your country?" she asked.

"No. I was betrothed to a man named Jacob, though."

"Why would you wait so long to marry?"

I shrugged. "Because I didn't want to get married."

Fulcinia gave me an odd look. In Roman culture, it didn't matter whether a woman or girl wanted to get married or not—the decision was her father's, not her's. There was no _toga virilis_ for Roman girls; instead, their coming-of-age ceremony was their wedding.

"But you are old now," Fulcinia said. "Half your life is gone and you have no children."

"I don't want children right now," I said. I had absolutely no desire to have children in the fifth century CE. For one thing, dying in childbirth was a very real possibility. For another, infant mortality rates were high, there were no vaccines or antibiotics, and I couldn't guarantee a child a stable future. If I stayed on Marius' estate, got married, and had children the way Fulcinia possibly envisioned me doing, what would I be condemning my theoretical offspring to? A life of near-starvation and servitude? I couldn't do that.

And never mind the theoretical children, what about the theoretical _husband_? My parents had been thrilled when I'd gotten engaged to Jake; they'd been afraid I'd be alone forever. But months have passed in Roman Britain, and I found that I wasn't lonely without him. I didn't miss his company or wish he was with me. I was managing on my own perfectly well. I couldn't envision finding a husband among fifth-century men; I wouldn't be his social equal, I would be expected to cook, clean, have sex with him as a _marital duty_, and if I decided I didn't like him there was no possibility of divorce. It would be difficult to make my way as a single woman, but I saw it as the better option to being tethered to a man who saw me as more of a possession than a person.

I didn't want to end up like Fulcinia.

My stash of gunpowder grew as the leaves turned color and began to fall from the trees. I began to plot the other aspects of mine and Guinevere's escape. A few horses were kept in a stable, which was locked at night. From gossip I knew that the key was kept in the guards' barracks, however. I took on extra duties when one of the other servants was too sick to work, and delivered food to the barracks. The key was kept on a hook right by the door.

I had no idea how to access that key at night, short of either a) sneaking into the barracks and stealing it or b) overpowering multiple guards and taking it by force. I was neither stealthy nor a fighter, so neither of those options would work for me. If I wanted to use horses, I'd need to conduct my escape during the daytime when the stables were unlocked. That would be hard. For one thing, I'd be questioned if I was seen around the horses when Fulcinia's business didn't take me there. For another, I had no idea how to ride.

Maybe it would just be easier to go on foot. But then I'd be too slow and the guards would catch us...

My thoughts went in circles for weeks and weeks, trying out every possibility, niggling at every shortcoming and flaw. The plan had to be _perfect_; I had only one chance to get this right.

September passed into October, then November. I was given blankets, which I had to boil to get rid of the lice before using, for my grass-stuffed pallet in Fulcinia's quarters. My Common Brittonic improved, and I could have short conversations with Hywela and the villagers. They had apparently noticed me giving bread to the children, and liked me somewhat for that. But they were distrustful of all the servants who worked in the villa, since many were of Roman origin (like Gnaeus) and thus received better treatment than the Briton fieldworkers. Sentiment against Marius was strong, but so was their fear of his guards. I couldn't look for help there.

"I am sorry," Dyfed said to me one day, "for what my daughter did. Her children were very hungry, and she hoped Marius would give her food in exchange for betraying your friends."

"Did he give it to her?" I asked.

"No," Dyfed answered, and sighed. Several days later, Dyfed approached Marius. He went on his knees and begged that the villagers be able to keep more of the food that they grew, because they were so hungry. Marius ordered that he be whipped for his insolence, and then have his wrists chained to a tripod and be forced to stand upright for three days and nights as a punishment. Anyone caught feeding him would receive the same treatment.

The first snow fell, and the temperature was now regularly below freezing all day. I remembered my internal promise to get Guinevere back to her uncle before midwinter, and despaired. Was she even still alive after all this time?

And then Fulcinia handed me a golden opportunity.

She explained to me that it was the feast day for some saint whose patronage fell over abandoned/orphaned children (as I write this I cannot remember the saint's name), and that for the sake of her murdered daughters she gave extra food to the priests on this particular day. I needed to go to the kitchen, fetch the food, and then deliver it to the little stone outbuilding where the priests were holding Guinevere. I was all but skipping with joy as I did her bidding, and barely noticed Gnaeus' typical foul mood as I took a heavy kettle of meaty stew.

My mood changed, however, when I knocked on the building's door.

"What do you want?" a priest demanded, glaring at me as he opened the door a crack. A puff of stale, corpse-smelling air hit my nose, and my stomach roiled. How had Guinevere managed to live so long with this stench? ...Or was she the source of the smell?

"The Lady Fulcinia has brought you a gift of food, to commemorate your service to God," I said, breathing through my mouth.

The priest looked at me and then the steaming kettle with naked suspicion, then grunted and opened the door fully. "Hand it over," he said.

"I can carry it in for you."

"There is no need for that."

"I don't want to burden you. Please let me carry it." I took a step closer, crowding the priest against the doorway.

The priest gave in and beckoned me down the stairs after him, where the corpse-stench grew stronger. The air was cold and damp, the stone steps slippery. I walked carefully, beginning to sweat from nervousness. Manacles and chains hung from hooks in the wall, and there were cages and cells low to the ground. I glimpsed wizened corpses in some of them.

_Please, God, don't let Guinevere be dead_, I thought over and over. The hair on the back of my neck was standing up and I was sweating in earnest despite the building's chill. Every instinct told me to run far, far away from this place and never come back, but I forced myself to keep walking.

"Who is this?" another priest demanded.

"A servant," the first priest said, shrugging. "Set that pot down here," he said, gesturing to a bloodstained table. I did so, bending slightly, and looked into the furthest cell from the door.

A woman was sitting curled against the wall. Her hair was greasy and lank, her face gaunt with hunger, her limbs like sticks. She looked up at me, and her dark eyes widened.

"_Guinevere_," I whispered.

"What did you say?" the priest demanded.

"Nothing," I replied quickly. Then inspiration struck me.

"Eek! A rat!" I said, and upended the kettle in the direction of Guinevere's cell, splashing one of the priests. Stewed vegetables and hunks of meat spilled across the filthy floor. Guinevere quickly reached out through the bars of her cell and grabbed a handful of food, stuffing it into her mouth.

"Stupid woman!" the priest said, slapping me. I reeled backwards from the blow, and the pair of them berated and slapped at me more, hurrying me back up the stairs and out the door. I didn't care that they were hitting me. Guinevere was alive! Alive! I could still free her!

"—by Bishop Germanius of Rome, open the gate," a horseman said.

I stopped outside the priests' charnel house, staring at the visitors. There were nine of them, seven men in armor and two without. The gate to the villa was opened, and Marius stepped out.

"It is a wonder you have come!" Marius said. "Good Jesus! Arthur and his Knights!"

Arthur? What? I looked over the horsemen. The ones in armor seemed fearsome and bore lots of weapons, but none of them wore a crown. Which one was supposed to be King Arthur?

The spokesperson for the horsemen continued talking, saying that the estate needed to evacuated immediately because a Saxon army was nearby. Marius was stubborn, but ultimately gave in and agreed to start the preparations. I rushed into the villa and began gathering up Fulcinia's things, stuffing her clothes and jewelry into bags. Outside, the stables had been opened and the horses were being hitched to wagons. I loaded the sacks onto one of the wagons, then went back to Fulcinia's quarters.

Of my own belongings, there was little. I had my journal, the inkwell and quills Alecto had given me, my pallet, a blanket, and the dress and boots I was wearing.

And an amphora of gunpowder. How was I supposed to transport that?

I went out of the villa again, and saw that the spokesperson for the horsemen had seen Dyfed. I watched as he used his sword and struck down the manacles holding him upright.

"Help this man! Help him!" he ordered.

Hywela rushed forward with a blanket, wrapping it around Dyfed's shoulders. Her husband, Gwilym, carried him to one of the wagons. I glanced toward the stone outbuilding, and saw that two of the priests were... stacking stones in front of the door? But they hadn't brought anyone outside. Was Guinevere... were they leaving her to die in there?

"Lord!" I called out. I didn't know if this man was nobility or not, but it didn't matter; he had a horse and a sword, and was therefore my social superior. And he had saved Dyfed, so perhaps he was in the mood to be a hero. "Lord, please!"

The man turned a pair of tired green eyes on me. "What is it?" he asked.

"The... the priests... they have prisoners in that building over there," I said, pointing.

"_Be silent!_" Marius thundered.

"They're still alive and they're walling them up inside there! Please, help th—" A guard grabbed me by my hair and threw me to the ground. Instantly, the horseman's sword was at his throat. He backed away from me, and I got to my feet. The horseman was already striding towards the stone outbuilding, flanked by the other Knights.

In the distance, faintly, drums began to pound.

"Arthur, we have no time," a black-haired Knight said.

So the green-eyed man was Arthur. I looked at him, trying to envision him with a crown on his head. He looked... well, far more human than I had ever imagined _King Arthur_ to be. His armor was dinged and nicked from many battles, and there was dirt on his hands. His Knights weren't in much better condition; they looked like a ragtag bunch of mercenaries, to be honest. One of them even had tattoos on his face!

Ragtag bunch of mercenaries they might look like, but they defied Marius and kicked down the door to the stone building.

"You!" Marius said, rounding on me. "Why did you tell them—"

A Knight wearing a kilt drove his horse between Marius and I, forcing the Roman to back away. I retreated to Fulcinia's side.

"That was a brave thing you did," the older woman whispered, her lips barely moving. "Foolish, but brave."

"I don't abandon my friends," I whispered back.

Arthur emerged from the stone building, carrying Guinevere and calling for water. In his arms she looked as small as a child. Fulcinia and I rushed to her side, the Roman woman carrying a waterbag.

"Guinevere, Guinevere, can you talk? Are you alright? Where is Owenna?" I asked, pulling her head into my lap. I stroked her greasy hair and helped hold her upright so that she could drink more easily. She stared at Arthur with bleary eyes. Her mouth formed words in between gulps of water, but no sound came out.

"Stop what you are doing!" Marius ordered.

"What is this madness?" Arthur demanded, standing up. Rage burned in his eyes.

"They are all pagans here! They refuse to do the task God has set for them! They must die, as an example!"

"You mean they refuse to be your serfs!" Arthur bellowed back.

"You are a Roman," Marius retorted, "you understand. And you are a Christian. You!" He turned to me. "You with your mismatched eyes, I should have known you were a sorceress who kept them alive with vile magics. You should have gone into the temple with them."

Arthur punched him before he could get any further. I liked him then, and liked him even more when he had the mad priests walled back up inside their stone building. The drums were closer now. Marius, subdued, stormed off to a wagon he had to himself, while Guinevere, the rescued boy named Lucan, Fulcinia, and I climbed into another. I jumped out to retrieve my amphora of gunpowder, and brought it out just in time for us to set off eastward, into the mountains.


	8. Chapter 8

"So, you speak our language now," Guinevere murmured, staring at me from within a huddle of blankets. I crouched next to her in the wagon, swaying gently with its motion as the horses pulled it along the rutted dirt track.

"A little bit," I answered. "That woman, Hywela, taught me," I said, and pointed to where Hywela walked next to her husband further down the line.

Guinevere didn't even glance towards her. "You worked as a maid for that Roman woman?" she asked, jerking her chin towards Fulcinia. The older woman was sitting with one of the Knights, a huge, imposing man named Dagonet. Together, they kept watch over the only other survivor of the priests' dungeon, a feverish boy named Lucan.

"Yes," I said. We were speaking Common Brittonic for some measure of privacy, though I think Dagonet understood us. "I was trying to think of a plan to free you," I confessed.

Guinevere smiled at that. "You are not a warrior," she said. "There was nothing you could do."

"Not necessarily," I said, and pointed to my amphora of gunpowder nestled in a corner. "Scholars have knowledge of many things. The powder in that amphora is explosive when exposed to fire; it could have destroyed the outer wall of the dungeon and allowed me to get inside."

"What is it made of?"

"Sulfur, charcoal, and saltpeter. It took a long time to gather, and I was trying to work out a way to get food and horses as well."

Guinevere smiled again. "You are a loyal friend," she commented. Then her expression sobered. "You told me you are from the future."

"Yes, I am."

"What will happen to Britain?"

I sighed. "The Saxons will triumph, and—"

"_Never!_" Guinevere hissed, forcing herself upright. Dagonet glanced back at us. "Not while I live! Not while any free Briton lives!"

I shrugged helplessly. "Maybe they won't conquer Britain this generation," I said, "but in two hundred years or so this island will be Saxon. Nobody will speak this language anymore, and Christianity will be the dominant religion."

"But Arthur—"

"Is considered a myth. A lot of people write about him, but there's little evidence that he was an actual person. The legend might have been a conglomerate of multiple warlords who fought in Britain, though this time period is about right for when he should have lived."

"But his fame lived even into your time," Guinevere pointed out. "What of his Knights?"

"Lancelot is the most famous, but there's also Gawain, Galahad, Percival, Tristan—his romance with a woman named Iseult is very famous—and, Guinevere, there's something you should know."

"What?"

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, and lowered my voice so that Dagonet couldn't hear us. "In the legends, Arthur becomes king of Britain," I said softly, "and his queen is named Guinevere."

Her eyes widened.

There was a thump from the front of the wagon, and we looked up. Arthur eased himself in, making a path between Fulcinia and Dagonet to get to Guinevere. He crouched next to her, forcing me aside. He set her dislocated fingers, which Guinevere endured very bravely, and spoke with her briefly. Guinevere accused him of being 'a famous Briton who killed his own people', which Arthur said nothing to. He left after that.

"...Is that your idea of flirting?" I asked.

"Arthur _must_ stay in Britain," Guinevere said. A fire burned in her dark eyes. "He cannot go to Rome. There is no more time to seek the Cauldron of Rebirth; I know now it is my destiny to bind him here, so that my people have a leader." Her eyes sharpened to me. "If the Saxons will take Britain, they must bleed for the privilege. I will not give up my home without fighting for it." She clasped my arm. "Thank you for telling me my future, Claire."

"It isn't necessarily true," I said. "You don't have to get married to Arthur if you don't want to."

"But I must," Guinevere said. There was no despair in her voice or face, only steely resolve. "He is an honorable man; it would be a good match."

"But what about love?" I asked.

"Love? Love is for the poets," she said, and looked out the front of the wagon. The dark-haired Knight I now knew to be Lancelot was riding there, speaking with Arthur. He glanced towards the wagon, and for a few seconds his and Guinevere's eyes locked.

I didn't have the heart to tell her about her 'destined' love triangle.

The conversation died after that. Snow swirled around the caravan, and a chill wind blew. I huddled into my blankets next to the amphora in the back of the wagon, seeking warmth. Guinevere wrapped herself in a fur and went to the front of the wagon, seeking clearer air and a view of the road ahead. I fell into a light doze and only jolted awake at nightfall, as the wagon rumbled off the road and into a grove of pine trees. I collected deadwood for a fire, and at Fulcinia's suggestion melted snow in a kettle so that Guinevere and Lucan could wash off the grime of their months of captivity. Fulcinia gave Guinevere a spare dress with long, flowing sleeves.

I sat in front of the fire outside the wagon, writing in this journal. Someone cleared their throat behind me, and I looked up.

The Knight wearing the kilt and his close companion, the other Knight with long tawny hair, stood there.

"Hello," I said slowly. "Do you want to speak with Guinevere?"

The Knight in the kilt shook his head. "Dag says you're a prophetess," he said, which made my eyes widen. How much had Dagonet heard during mine and Guinevere's conversation? I glanced towards him, where he was entertaining Lucan with a story. The boy looked up at the fearsome Knight with shining eyes, a rare smile playing on his face.

"I..." I said, and trailed off. I wasn't a _prophetess_. That was ridiculous. 'Prophetess' was only a few steps away from 'witch', which could get me burned at the stake among Christians. I didn't know how these pagan Sarmations felt, but they would only have approached me if they wanted something.

"Will we make it to the Wall ahead of the Saxons?" the kilted Knight asked.

"...I'm sorry, but I don't know. There's supposed to be a great battle between Arthur and the Saxons at a place called Badon Hill. Arthur wins, supposedly."

Arthur's involvement in the siege of Badon Hill had been written about by Nennius in the ninth century CE in the _Historia Brittonum_. It had also said that King Arthur had killed almost a thousand men single-handed during the battle, which I doubted. That was the problem with 'historical' accounts of King Arthur; everything was so heaped in legend, his deeds so exaggerated (and in some cases completely made up), that it was impossible to tell what was real and what wasn't.

"Is that it?" the kilted Knight demanded.

"That's all I know," I said.

The kilted Knight made a disgusted noise in his throat and walked away.

The Knight with the tawny hair sighed. "Don't mind Galahad," he said. "We're all tired and we want to go home. I'm Gawain, by the way."

"Have you ever fought a man in green armor?" I asked. "He may have offered to let you strike him on the condition that you be struck in turn a year and a day later."

Gawain gave me a puzzled look. "No. Why?"

"There is a story about you doing that," I said. "It's very famous where I live."

Gawain smiled. "Poets always lie," he said, and walked away into the night after Galahad.

Well that was certainly the truth. I sighed too and bent my head to my journal, continuing to write. I'd wrapped my hands in rags in an attempt to keep them warm, but the winter's chill still sunk into my fingers. I inched closer to the fire, and my eyelids were starting to droop when Guinevere put a hand on my shoulder.

"Claire," she said, "walk with me."

"Where are we going?" I asked as I stood up. I stoppered the inkwell and put away my journal, then fell in step beside her as she walked through the camp.

"We are meeting my uncle," Guinevere said.

"Myrddhin is here?"

"His scouts have been watching the caravan's progress all day; he will want to talk with me. And I must tell him of your prophecies."

"They aren't prophecies!" I protested.

"Then what are they?" Guinevere demanded, rounding on me. "Why were you driven away from the Wall and to my uncle's people? Why did I feel compelled to bring you with me on my quest for the Cauldron? And why, when our quest fell into ruin, did we meet Arthur Castus and the Knights of the Round Table? Destiny is everything—and you have knowledge that no-one else does, which must be put to use against the Saxon horde."

Guinevere would have continued talking, but she checked herself and looked beyond my shoulder. Arthur had gotten up from his sleeping place and was following us. We turned away from him and continued walking, past the fires of the Knights and villagers, into the darkness of the woods. Faintly behind us I could hear Arthur's armor clinking.

"Ladies," Arthur said eventually, "it isn't safe to wander."

"We are not wandering," Guinevere said, and pointed to between two trees. Merlin stood there.

"Peace between us this night, Arthur Castus," Merlin said, striding among us. He and Arthur talked, and Arthur told the tale of how he had taken Excalibur not from an enchanted stone, but from his father's grave-mound as his mother was burned alive. Merlin listened, his eyes sympathetic and his voice a tad gentler as he said he had not wished for Igraine's death. His voice hardened again, however, as he spoke of the present rather than the past, and asked Arthur to be a war-leader for the Celts against the Saxons. Arthur refused. Guinevere insisted it was his destiny. Arthur claimed that there was no destiny, only free will.

"And what of the free will of your Knights?" Merlin asked. "Did they die in vain?"

Arthur strode away into the dark without answering. Merlin watched him go, then turned to me.

"Claire McLane," he said softly. "How has Britain treated you?"

"The Britons have treated me well," I said, "for the most part. The Romans... not so much."

"That is the way of it," Merlin agreed.

"Uncle, Claire has the gift of prophecy," Guinevere interjected. "She is from a thousand years in the future, and knows many tales of Arthur and his Knights. She has knowledge of how Arthur will defeat the Saxons."

"It's not _exact_ knowledge, and it's not _sure_," I said, feeling frustrated. "A handful of people _several hundred years from now_—which means there are no eyewitness accounts—have written about Arthur defeating a Saxon army at a place called Badon Hill. That doesn't mean it's true, and they don't provide details, and I'm not an expert in this anyway." I had wanted to be a linguistic anthropologist, for goodness sake, not a historian specializing in Arthurian myths.

"Then _you_ must write how it was done," Merlin said. "You will provide the eyewitness account, so that our descendants may know of our deeds."

"Britain will be free," Guinevere said, "now and for all time."

I shook my head. "Even if this Arthur Castus will become the legendary King Arthur, all of the evidence gathered over the centuries points to the Saxons overwhelming the people of Britain, settling here, and claiming this land as their own."

Merlin sighed and looked up at the stars, then back down at me. "That may be so," he said. "But Arthur is not Saxon, and so long as the legend of Arthur lives then some part of Britain will be free. We will not be forgotten."


	9. Chapter 9

Merlin was gathering an army of British tribesmen to fight the Saxons. He had brought together the warriors of the Novantae, the Selgovae, and the Votadini from the free British lands between Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine Wall further north. Beyond the Antonine Wall were the Picts of Caledonia, which would come to be known as Scotland. They spoke their own language, frequently raided the Britons, and would be of no help in the coming fight. South of Hadrian's Wall, the Carvetti and Brigantes tribes were amassing weapons and armor under the noses of their Roman overlords in preparation for fighting the Saxons.

"Will you come with us, Gwinwyfr?" Merlin asked, standing there in the woods that night.

Guinevere glanced in the direction that Arthur had gone. "No," she said. "I will stay with him, for now. But I will not abandon our people."

Merlin had nodded, given Guinevere a bow and arrows, then faded into the forest. Guinevere and I returned to the fires of the caravan. I spread out my pallet under a wagon, wrapped myself in my blanket, and tried to sleep. Dawn broke with chaos, as Marius took Lucan captive and tried to seize control of the caravan. Guinevere shot him in the chest and ended his plans, and Marius' guards surrendered their swords to Arthur.

Of more pressing importance was the result of the tattooed Knight's scouting mission. He rode into the camp just after Marius was killed, threw a captured crossbow at Arthur's feet, and announced that the Saxons were close behind us and gaining fast. Everything was hurriedly packed up, and we set off down the mountain road. I sat in the wagon with Fulcinia, who was staring at nothing with a contemplative look on her face.

"Are you alright?" I asked her softly, putting a hand on her arm.

"He is finally dead," she whispered to me. "I knew God would punish him for his arrogance, but I did not think... well, I suppose nothing can be expected." She shrugged and sat back, wrapping her cloak more securely around her shoulders.

"What will happen to you now?" I asked.

"I will go to Rome with Alecto. He has some inheritance waiting there, enough to afford housing and servants. Will you come with us?"

"...No," I said at last. I didn't want to be Fulcinia's maid for the rest of my life. And besides... I didn't believe in Guinevere's talk of destiny, but Merlin's demand for an eyewitness account of the Battle of Badon Hill had stirred something in my bones. All of my frustrations with the Arthurian myths—their lack of cohesiveness, how they were written by multiple authors over a period of centuries, how nothing could be verified—could be solved if I just... wrote a detailed narrative of everything that happened in Arthur's reign.

Suddenly, I had a purpose.

It snowed again, and the path grew narrower and steeper as we climbed further into the mountains. Our progress slowed, which made Arthur and the Knights anxious. They rode up and down the length of the caravan, urging everyone on, clearly impatient. If the Saxons caught us, it would be their job to form a rearguard and give the caravan time to escape, which they probably didn't want to do.

Around mid-afternoon the path abruptly leveled, and we came to a frozen lake. Arthur and the Knights tested the way with their horses ahead of the wagons. The ice creaked and groaned ominously, and a spiderweb of cracks appeared beneath their hooves, but we could hear the Saxon war-drums behind us. There was no choice but to cross it. Arthur ordered the wagons be unloaded and everyone spread out across the ice, so that the weight of the caravan wasn't concentrated in a single spot. I climbed out of the wagon with my amphora of gunpowder and began cautiously walking; the ice was slippery, but my hiking boots had enough of a grip that it wasn't unbearable.

The drums grew louder. The caravan continued onward, but the Knights... were staying behind. So was Guinevere.

"What are you doing?" I demanded.

"Making a stand," Guinevere answered calmly, testing the string of her bow.

"So, eight of you against an army? That's suicide!"

"If your prophecies are true, we will survive this," Guinevere said. "Claire, you need to leave. The Saxons are almost here."

"I'm not leaving," I growled.

"You are not a warrior!" Guinevere said, starting to lose her temper. "You must go!"

"Your plan is to break the ice, right? So that the Saxons can't cross?"

"...Yes," Dagonet said, watching us.

I hefted the amphora of gunpowder. "I have something that can break a _lot_ of ice."

"Wine will not be of help here," Arthur said. "Lady, you need to leave."

"It's not wine. It's a powder that will explode when exposed to fire. I'll break the ice."

"Claire, are you certain of this?" Guinevere demanded.

"Yes, I am."

Guinevere turned to Arthur and drew herself up to her full height. Even in a hand-me-down dress and with bruised fingers, she looked a queen. "I vouch for her. Bring a torch."

Arthur hesitated, and the Saxon army rounded the bend in the road and came into view at the shore of the lake. There must have been nearly two hundred of them, led by a bald man with a plaited beard. The drums abruptly ceased as the Saxons surveyed the expanse of the lake and the nine people on the other side.

"Claire," Guinevere said softly, and handed me a lit torch. "We'll cover you when you retreat back to us. Be quick, and good luck."

"There won't be enough time for me to retreat," I said, realizing my error. The gunpowder would explode _immediately_ upon contact with fire, and I didn't have a fuse. Just dropping a torch directly into the amphora... well, I didn't know if I'd be vaporized instantaneously with the ensuring explosion or if chunks of my body would go spewing across the landscape, but it wouldn't be pretty.

I handed Guinevere back the torch. "Set your arrow on fire," I instructed. "I'm going to put this pot in the middle of the lake, and then you need to shoot it so that it explodes. Please—"

The Saxons fired a volley of arrows that fell pathetically short of the Knights, Guinevere, and I.

"They're testing the range," Guinevere explained at my puzzled look. "Claire, you don't have much time."

"Lady, do not make me regret this decision," Arthur said.

"Please remember," I said, "that in all the stories I've read about King Arthur there's not anyone named Claire, so..." I took a deep breath, "it doesn't matter what happens to me. Shoot the damn pot."

I turned and walked towards the center of the lake with the amphora under my arm, waving to the Saxons with my free hand. "Don't shoot! Don't shoot!" I called out in both Latin and Common Brittonic. This wasn't my job; I was a scholar of languages, not a warrior. Unlike the Knights, I hadn't spent more than a decade of my life fighting and training for a situation just like this. My knees felt weak and my mouth was dry, and I was acutely aware that I could die right here, right now, for no better reason than because the enemy didn't feel like sparing me. But the bald Saxon held up a hand, and his crossbowmen held their fire.

"Claire!" one of the Saxons called out. "Claire!"

Wait. How did they know my name?

Jake ran out onto the ice from the Saxon ranks, slipping slightly and waving his arms to keep his balance. He was wearing a brown tunic and hooded cloak, and bore no weapons.

"Claire, what are you doing here?" he demanded.

"I could ask the same of you," I retorted. It felt odd to be speaking English again after all this time.

"The Saxons," he said, and jerked a thumb over his shoulder, "think I'm a Briton, and they're using me as a guide to get to Hadrian's Wall to smash the last of the Celtic resistance. You need to come with us."

"No, I don't."

"Claire, I'm serious. These guys are savages—they're looting and burning their way across this island, and the only way to be spared is to join them."

"I'm not."

"_Claire_—"

"On the other side of this lake is King Arthur, okay? _King Arthur_. I've picked my side; I'm not going to abandon them."

Jake's eyes hardened. "You should know better than this," he said. "You _know_ the Saxons are going to win eventually, Arthur or not. The Saxon warlord, Cerdic, is going to destroy him. He has eight hundred warriors marching south as we speak. Cynric, his son, has two hundred right here. That's a thousand men."

"I can do basic math without your help, Jake," I snapped.

The bald Saxon yelled something across the ice in a language that wasn't Latin or Common Brittonic. Jake yelled a reply in the same language, then turned back to me.

"Cynric is getting impatient," Jake said. "You're coming with me. _Now_."

"Absolutely not," I said, and set down the amphora next to me, where Guinevere and the Knights would have a clear view of it. It wasn't just the bald Saxon (Cynric?) who was getting impatient; Guinevere and Arthur would be too.

"What's that?" Jake demanded, pointing to the amphora.

"A present for the Saxons," I said. And then, because I had once loved this man, I added: "You should walk away now. Get off the ice."

Jake's eyes narrowed. He kicked the amphora, which fell over and shattered. Gray gunpowder spilled across the ice amidst the shards of pottery. I gaped at the mess, then turned and tried to walk away, back to Arthur and Guinevere. Jake grabbed my arm.

"Did you try to make a _bomb_?" he demanded. "Are you trying to blow up the ice?"

"Yes!" I said. I looked over my shoulder and yelled in Common Brittonic: "_Shoot it! Shoot it now!_" Guinevere nocked the fire-arrow to the string of her bow and pointed it towards the sky. I wrenched my arm free from Jake and started to run. Jake began screaming at the Saxons in their language.

I didn't hear Guinevere's bowstring twang, and I didn't even hear the explosion as the fire-arrow struck the pile of gunpowder; the explosion was too big for noise, like the air itself was being torn in half. I felt a blast of heat against my back, accompanied by what felt like a hard shove. I fell over with a ringing noise in my ears, and the ice shifted beneath me. The spiderweb of fissures left by the caravan's passage grew and deepened before my eyes, and I heard sharp cracks and pops as the ice split apart.

Arthur, Guinevere, and the Knights were retreating as the ice broke, moving to the further shore. Rather than a solid sheet of thick ice, chunks now floated in the water, unstable and dangerous. It was impossible for me to reach them. I was stuck on a solitary chunk of ice that was just big enough for my body, which wobbled dangerously beneath my weight. Near the opposite shore, the Saxons were screaming as the ice broke up beneath them, dunking them into the freezing water. Jake and the bald Saxon had reached the closer shore.

I tried to crawl onto another chunk of ice. The one I was on dipped beneath my weight, rolling over and sending me into the water. I automatically tried to shriek from how cold it was, but water filled my mouth. I surfaced, coughing and sputtering. A piece of ice fell on top of me, forcing me under. I clawed my way between two chunks and got a few lungfuls of air before the ice moved again. I could feel my extremities going numb from cold; if I stayed in this water much longer it wouldn't be long before hypothermia set in and killed me. I kicked and swam towards the nearer shore, which was unfortunately occupied by Saxons—but that mattered less than my immediate survival.

My lungs burned. Suddenly there were no more chunks of ice. It was a solid sheet again; the force of the explosion had only damaged it so far. I was underneath the sheet with no way to get out. I banged on the ice with my numbed fists, trying to break it from underneath. No luck. I needed air! I couldn't breathe!

Suddenly, a sword stabbed down through the ice in front of my face. It withdrew, then stabbed down again a little ways away. The ice cracked and split, and whoever was wielding the sword levered out a small chunk. It was just big enough for me to get out. I surfaced, gasping and shivering, and someone grabbed my upper arms and pulled me out of the water. I wiped my eyes clear, then froze as I felt the hard poke of a swordpoint against the soft flesh of my throat.

"You killed my men, ice-witch," the bald Saxon snarled in accented Latin, "tell me why I shouldn't kill you now."


	10. Chapter 10

"I..." I said, and swallowed. I dragged my eyes up the length of the sword to meet Cynric's dark eyes. "If you kill me, your entire army will be cursed," I lied. "Do you see my eyes? One looks into the past, while the other looks into the future... and I have seen your fate, son of Cerdic."

"And what is my fate, witch?" the Saxon demanded.

"You will fight at Badon Hill, and come to know a loss greater than you can ever imagine," I lied again through my chattering teeth. I was shivering violently from cold, which was undermining my 'mysterious prophetess' persona.

Cynric looked down at me for a moment more, then removed his sword from my throat. I gasped from relief, my hand flying to my neck. There was wetness there, not just from water. I felt a stinging sensation, and my fingertips came away stained red with blood. Just a tiny cut! I was lucky.

"Don't think yourself too fortunate, witch," Cynric warned. "Even the cleverest tongues can be cut out." He looked up and snarled something to Jake in Anglo-Saxon, then stormed away and began snapping orders to the remnants of his army. Out of the two hundred men that had marched onto the ice, maybe seventy remained.

Jake knelt next to me as I sat up. "What did he say?" I asked.

"He's... taking you to Cerdic," Jake said.

"Which means?"

"You're gonna be tortured, probably," Jake said, and shrugged. "I can't help you."

"Well, try and find me some dry clothes, at least, before I get pneumonia," I snapped.

"Fine, fine..."

_I can't help you_. Hmph! And to think I'd been engaged to this man. _I_ had risked myself and spent months storing gunpowder in an attempt to free a friend I'd known for less than a week, but Jake didn't even _try_ to think of a way to help his fiancée escape torture and probably death? Damn it all. Why had I ever agreed to his proposal?

Well, I knew why: I'd thought there would be nobody else who would ever want a fat, odd-eyed woman like me. Now I knew better: romantically desired I might never be, but that was a more than acceptable alternative to being disrespected and made to feel worthless by someone who was supposed to love me. Jake had proposed to me because he hadn't wanted to put in the work for a relationship with a woman who actually valued herself, and I'd been an idiot and convinced myself that I was supposed to love him in return for the odd scrap of affection.

Jake did make himself somewhat useful, however, and quickly returned with a wool dress, a cloak, and boots that could fit me. There was a large bloodstain on the front of the dress, and a small hole.

"Do I want to know where this came from?" I asked.

Jake squinted at the garment. "I think that's from an arrow," he said, pointing to the hole. "And you probably don't."

I went behind a bush to change, trying to move as quickly as possible so that no Saxon could get a glimpse of me. When I was almost finished I looked regretfully down at my hiking boots, which were soaked through and unwearable, and pulled on the rather shapeless, floppy boots that the Saxons wore. They tied up the legs with leather laces and had a very thin sole, which meant they weren't even remotely waterproof. I wrapped my wet dress around my hiking boots and carried it in my arms out of the bushes. They wouldn't dry out this way, but I was afraid that one of the Saxon warriors would see the 21st-century boots, be intrigued, and decide to take them. Aside from my journal (which was still with the caravan at this point) I had nothing left of my 21st-century life but this pair of boots.

Cynric made no effort to retrieve the bodies of his drowned comrades, instead ordering that we all turn about and go back down the mountain road to rejoin the main army marching south. I stuck close to Jake. As much as I despised him at this point, he was the only person I felt relatively safe with. I was acutely aware that I was the only woman walking with an all-male barbarian army, and it was only because of Cynric's 'mercy' that I was alive and un-raped. The one soldier I made the mistake of making eye contact with leered and made a suggestive gesture, which made me quickly look away.

"So, how did you meet the Saxons?" I asked Jake, speaking English for the sake of privacy.

Jake shrugged. "When that lightning hit, I found myself in a forest. I went steadily northeast and kind of wandered into them as they were landing their boats. Cerdic said I could make myself useful or die, so I made myself useful."

"I guess it was lucky you studied _Beowulf_ so much, so you could speak their language."

Jake and I had met in an advanced Latin class at UVA, and he'd initially impressed me by reciting _Beowulf_ in the original language... which was coincidentally the language of the Saxons.

"Yeah, yeah... I did some digging into the local gossip and have been feeding these guys lies ever since," Jake said, the ghost of a smile flitting briefly over his face. "They think I'm _actually_ a local, can you believe that?"

"Speak a language we all understand," Cynric growled in his accented Latin, "or don't speak at all."

"How... How do you know the tongue of the Romans?" I asked. Unlike Britain, what would come to be Germany had never been successfully conquered by the Romans, and if I remembered correctly the Saxons were from the northern part of Magna Germania—just south of Denmark, actually. Cynric, his father, and his troops had all been isolated from the Empire until their decision to come here.

Cynric looked at me, and I had to swallow the urge to both flinch away from him and reach up to feel the cut he had made on my throat. "Traders," he said eventually, as though even the single word spoken to me was a grudging gift.

There was no conversation after that, since Jake and I were too wary to talk to each other in a language that Cynric understood. We walked for hours down the narrow, winding mountain road, and after a few miles the snow soaked through my 'new' leather boots and began numbing my feet. I didn't dare complain, however, and just kept stumbling along next to Jake to the beat of the Saxon war-drums. We continued walking as night fell, and passed the place where the caravan had stopped in the pine grove. Torches were lit, but that was the only concession to the darkness; we didn't stop to camp. My legs ached and I was barely able to keep my eyes open when Cynric finally called a halt.

No fires were lit. Jake shared a piece of bread and a wizened apple with me, which I wolfed down... and then I hesitated. There was a part of me that was afraid to sleep—what if some Saxon warriors decided to have their way with me while I was vulnerable—but I was also desperately tired. Cynric sat down with his back to a tree and started sharpening his sword. I moved to within ten feet of him (I didn't dare come any closer), wrapped myself in my cloak, and lay down. His authority over these men was the only thing protecting me, and I fell asleep to the sound of his whetstone scraping down the length of the sword.

It felt like no time at all had passed before Jake was shaking me awake.

"What time is it?" I slurred, heaving myself into a sitting position.

"Before dawn," he answered. "Get up, quick, before Cynric gets impatient."

"How can you manage this?"

"I'm used to it. Hurry!"

I dragged myself upright. Every part of my body ached and my stomach was growling from hunger. Jake once again shared food with me, which I ate while walking. We left the mountains and began moving properly south.

Around mid-morning a village came into view. It was just a collection of thatched huts and barren fields, with no Roman villa presiding over them. As soon as the inhabitants saw the seventy Saxon warriors they collectively bolted for the surrounding hills and forest, which caused Cynric to sneer in disdain. We walked into the village, and as soon as Cynric gave the command his soldiers started looting. They went into the huts, took all the food and anything that looked valuable, then set fire to everything. Jake disappeared during the looting, then returned with a pair of thick, knitted wool socks.

"You _stole_ those," I accused.

"Yeah? So?" Jake responded. "They'd be burned if I didn't take them. Do you want them or not, Claire?"

I folded my arms across my chest, which caused Jake to roll his eyes. "Where do you think the food you've been eating comes from?" he demanded. "The Saxons sure as Hell didn't _buy_ it from these people."

I opened my mouth, then shut it again. "I'm fine," I huffed eventually. Jake gave me a long look, then knelt in what had once been the village square and put on the socks himself. They looked very warm, and I was suddenly aware of my wet, aching feet. I turned away from Jake and saw Cynric watching us. He held my gaze, his expression unreadable, until I looked away first.

We moved on, and kept walking all day and into the night once again. I ached worse than ever and was desperate for a rest, but there was no reprieve.

"We're getting close," Jake said eventually.

"How do you know?" I asked.

"Do you see ahead of us, how the road is churned up? That's the passage of Cerdic's army. We'll meet up with them before midnight."

And so we did. About an hour later I started to smell smoke, and after half an hour more saw a glow through the trees up ahead. We rounded a bend in the road and saw, in the grassy field before us, hundreds of campfires. It looked like a field of stars come to Earth, and I can remember being surprised by how pretty it looked from a distance... but then we came closer, and I could hear the talk and raucous laughter of the Saxon soldiers, and smell the stolen meat they were roasting.

At Cynric's command most of his soldiers dispersed to build their own fires and roast their own stolen food. A few officers stayed with him, and Jake and I, as he walked through the camp and came to a particular fire where a man with long blond hair was sitting.

"That's Cerdic," Jake murmured in my ear.

Cynric knelt at the fire and spoke in Anglo-Saxon with his father, with Jake translating.

"He says, 'Father, I have failed.'... Cerdic says, 'you have lost the respect of the enemy.'"

Cerdic stood up and moved to stand in front of his son, looming over him. Cynric actually looked _frightened_ at this, something I could never have imagined. He drew a knife and pointed it at his own throat.

"He says, 'I offer my life for my disgrace.'"

Cerdic knelt next to his son, took the knife away, and put an arm around his shoulders.

"Cerdic says, 'no, son.'"

Something in my chest relaxed at that. I had no love for Cynric, but the naked fear on his face as his father approached him had made me feel... pity. I had never feared my own father's displeasure to the point of wanting to commit suicide to make up for it... or maybe suicide was a better alternative to whatever Cynric could imagine his father doing to him. But the crisis had been averted; Cynric would be okay.

And then Cerdic's grip on his son tightened. He took the knife and pointed it at Cynric's eye. Cynric said made no protest and didn't attempt to fight or get away. He simply sat there, watching as the knife descended. At first I thought that Cerdic would take his son's eye, but the knifepoint dropped to his cheek and carved a deep, ugly cut along the side of his nose and past his mouth. Cynric didn't make a single sound of pain, and maintained eye contact with his father the whole time. After it was done Cerdic stood up and tossed the knife aside. He pointed to me and asked something.

"Cerdic asks who you are," Jake murmured. Then: "Cynric says you are the witch who killed his men with a fireball."

Cerdic chuckled and said something else.

"He wants to know why you didn't make another one and finish off his... his worthless son," Jake said. "He says that another Saxon named Braewald is now second in command, and that Braewold is like a son to him."

With blood streaming down his face and neck, Cynric grimaced and stalked away into the night.

"Cerdic asks if you can see the future," Jake said.

I nodded.

"He asks if you can see the outcome of tomorrow's battle."

"Tell him, he will lose to Arthur," I said.

Cerdic smiled at that.

"He says that when he wins tomorrow, he will present you with Arthur's severed head... and then put out your eyes with red-hot knives."

I froze at that, and my jaw clenched. Cerdic's smile grew slightly as he watched me.

"Tell him that I am not afraid because I know Arthur will win," I said, but my voice was too shrill. Cerdic's faint smile didn't budge as he heard the translation. He waved a hand and sat down at his fire with his back to me.

"You are dismissed," Jake said.

I needed to get away from Cerdic, and without thinking walked away into the depths of the Saxon camp. Jake wasn't with me and I felt alone and vulnerable. I could have been molested (or worse), but aside from being leered at I was mostly left alone. After maybe five minutes of wandering I saw Cynric sitting alone at a fire, staring into the flames. He hadn't done anything about the cut his father had given him, and blood was staining the fur he wore around his shoulders. He had taken the knife Cerdic had used and shoved it into the coals at his feet.

"Hello," I said cautiously.

"Leave me," Cynric growled.

I realized with a start that I wasn't afraid of him. Nothing Cynric could do to me would be worse than what Cerdic might do tomorrow. Even though history claimed that Arthur would win, I was still terrified; Nennius' account of the Battle of Badon Hill was based on legend—it might not be true. Or, even if Arthur did win, maybe Cerdic would survive and find me afterwards. I was a dead woman walking.

"That's going to get infected if you don't tend to it," I pointed out.

Cynric looked up from the flames and bared his teeth in a grimace of either annoyance, pain, or both. I sighed and went to collect a kettle, which took a while, and then filled it with white, un-trampled snow. I returned to Cynric and set the kettle of snow next to the fire to melt. When the snow had melted and started to steam I dipped a rag into it and approached Cynric.

"What are you doing?" he demanded, narrowing his eyes as I knelt next to him.

"Trying to do a good deed with my last night on Earth. Now sit still."

Miraculously, Cynric obeyed, and only glared at me as I wiped the blood off his neck and face. A muscle in his cheek twitched as I wiped over the cut itself, but he gave no other sign of pain.

"I'm surprised you're letting me do this," I commented.

One corner of Cynric's mouth twisted into an ugly smile. "Look down," he ordered.

I looked, and saw that he had a knife pressed against my belly. It wasn't the knife Cerdic had used to hurt him—_that_ one was still lying in the fire, for some reason—but it was big and looked very sharp. Cynric's smile widened at the surprised look on my face.

"One wrong move, witch, and I'll spill your guts across the ground."

"I'm not actually a witch," I said. "I'm just a woman who was born with strange eyes."

"Your sorcery at the lake—"

"The 'fireball' was caused by a special powder that explodes when touched by fire. You make it by mixing charcoal, saltpeter, and sulfur together. It's not difficult, and you could make it yourself if you tried."

Cynric grunted in what might have been disappointment. "So you didn't see my fate?" he asked.

"I was lying the entire time."

"...Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I think Cerdic is going to kill me very horribly tomorrow, and I'm not afraid of you anymore."

"You're helping your enemy," he pointed out.

All of the blood had been wiped away, and the cut itself had stopped bleeding. I stopped touching him, but Cynric didn't remove the knife he had pressed against me.

"Yes," I admitted. "But I am _choosing_ to spend my last night alive doing something to help a person who needs it, rather than just moping or crying or whatever." If I was left alone with my thoughts I _would_ cry and panic, dammit. Keeping busy was the only way to stop myself from breaking down.

"I don't need you," Cynric said.

I ignored him. "Let me see if I can find a needle and thread for your cut."

"No," Cynric snapped. He grabbed my hand and, with his hand over mine, took the knife out of the fire. The leather-wrapped handle was too warm under my hand, almost burning, and the blade itself glowed red-hot. Cynric pulled my hand and the knife up and brought it close to his face. He held eye contact with me as he slowly pushed the blade into the cut. There was a sizzling noise, and a smell like roast pork filled the air. Cynric snarled in pain, but held the knife there as the cut was cauterized.

"_Oh my God, oh my God, oh my_..." I mumbled over and over. I was too horrified to even feel nauseous, and could only stare into Cynric's eyes as he pulled the knife away. He broke eye contact to dunk the knife into the kettle of water and then wipe it clean on his pants.

"Are you still happy to help me?" he demanded.

I opened my mouth, then closed it again. I couldn't think of anything to say.

Cynric sheathed the knife he had threatened to eviscerate me with and sat back, apparently comfortable now. "Fetch me food, woman."

"Fetch your own food," I snapped out of reflex.

Cynric shrugged, stood up, and went to do just that. As I sat alone at the fire I was suddenly aware of the other Saxons watching me. They had seen that entire performance, and were now talking among themselves. Several held up knives and beckoned to me, and laughed when I hurriedly looked away. I could feel my face burning with shame and embarrassment. So much for doing a good deed...

Cynric returned with cheese and bread. He gave me a long, contemplative look, then offered me a piece of bread. Our hands brushed during the exchange, and I quickly jerked away from him. The bread was stale when I bit into it.

"Thanks," I said, very grudgingly. Cynric sat down next to me and started eating, his new scar writhing as he chewed. I wondered if it hurt. Cynric seemed unbothered by it, but he'd already established that pain tolerance was very important to him. Dumb macho Saxons... actually, it was probably endemic to all fifth century men, not just Saxons.

"Why didn't you just let me sew your cut?" I asked.

"I already had a plan for what to do," he said.

"Cauterizing it probably hurt more," I pointed out, then realizing I had said the wrong thing when Cynric only rolled his eyes. He didn't care about that.

"We will fight your friends tomorrow," Cynric said, "and we will kill every last one of them." He took a break from his food then, and looked directly at me. I could see a reflection of the flames in his eyes. There was no remorse there, no apology, not even a _justification_ for why he planned to kill them—it was simply a statement of intent.

"You should run while we're distracted," he said, very softly.


	11. Chapter 11

"You don't know for certain that you'll win," I pointed out.

"At the shore of this island Cerdic burned our boats as a sacrifice to Woden, Thunor, and Tiw; the men know that we either conquer or die."

_Odin, Thor, and Tyr_, I mentally translated. "So, you could still die," I said.

"Our gods favor us," Cynric said.

"And their gods favor them," I said, referring to the Britons. "Who's to say who will win?"

"Whoever is stronger," Cynric said, and shrugged. He took in my dubious expression and gestured to the surrounding fires with one arm. "We have nearly a thousand warriors who have come far, seeking wealth and land. Their business is war and war alone. The Britons are, what, farmers and sheep herders for the most part? They have few warriors who have dedicated their lives to the sword."

"They're defending their homes and their loved ones, though. That can put a great fire in a man's heart."

"Then we'll cut out their hearts. I'll tell you if I find any flames."

"If I'm still alive by then," I reminded him.

"If any of us are still alive," Cynric said, his tone quite casual. He could have been talking about the weather.

_Are you afraid of dying_, I was about to ask, then realized it was a stupid question. Cynric, a Saxon warrior, would scoff and answer in the negative, because as a warrior he needed to project the image that he wasn't afraid of dying.

"What will happen to you when you die?" I asked instead.

"So long as I die with a weapon in my hand, I will go to Valhalla to feast and fight with my ancestors. What will happen when _you_ die?"

The question surprised me, but Cynric seemed genuinely (albeit only mildly) curious. "Well, I think I've lived a good life, and have done as many good deeds and generous acts that I could, so I suppose I'll go to Heaven," I said. I had been baptized, though my family had lapsed from the Methodist church when I was a toddler and stopped attending services. Protestantism didn't even exist yet, however, and I didn't feel much of a kinship to the Roman Catholic church.

"So you're a Christian," Cynric said.

"Yes."

The Saxon made a disgusted noise. "In Germania, we kill every Christian we find."

"Why?"

"Because their faith is for the weak, and we are a strong people."

"So you're calling me weak?"

Cynric thought for several moments, then said: "You don't have a warrior's strength."

That wasn't an answer. Why was he evading a simple question?

"You can sleep safely at this fire, woman," Cynric said, not giving me a chance to question him.

"My _name_ is Claire," I grumbled. Then my eyes narrowed. "My safety in exchange for what?" I demanded. Was that the bargain Cynric wanted to strike? I sleep with him in exchange for not being violently raped by the Saxon soldiers surrounding us? I was no beauty—but maybe it had been a long time for Cynric, and he was desperate and not interested in my looks.

"Nothing," Cynric said, however. "It's a gift, since we could both die tomorrow."

"I don't trust your gift."

"Do you want to sleep at my father's fire instead?"

"_No_," I snapped, then edged away from him. I moved to the opposite side of the fire, wrapped myself in my cloak, and lay down. I was still very tired from the day's long march, and fell into troubled dreams of fire and bloodshed soon after I closed my eyes. The Saxon camp wasn't a quiet, restful place; I woke up several times during the night when people passed by or shouted, and at one point glanced over to where Cynric had settled down to rest. Even in sleep he frowned and kept one hand on the hilt of his sword.

My 'protector'. I didn't know what to think of him anymore. He was a harsh, violent, possibly crazy man _who'd pressed a red-hot knife against his own face_... and yet, he'd suggested that I run away while everyone was distracted fighting, given me food, had a reasonably civil conversation with me, and now used his presence as a shield from any unwanted attention I might receive from his subordinates. Maybe this behavior was his own idea of honorable action.

It didn't really matter, however. Everything would be decided by tomorrow's battle—_if_ Arthur won and _if_ Cerdic was slain, I would live and keep my eyes; if the Saxons won, however, I'd be brutally tortured and probably killed. Cynric wouldn't protect me from his father.

* * *

The next day dawned bright and cold. I woke up shivering, and my hands and feet were stinging from the winter's chill. Cynric was already awake. He squinted up at the rising sun for a moment, then grunted.

"A good day to fight," he commented. Then: "go to your betrothed."

I spent a moment more at Cynric's fire, warming my toes through my boots and wishing I had some hot tea and a decent breakfast, then got up and walked through the Saxon camp towards Cerdic's campsite. I was starting to recognize some Anglo-Saxon words from the talk around me: 'water' was _wæter_, 'beer' was _beor_, 'black' was _blæc_, 'blood' was _blod_. It wasn't enough for me to understand what anyone was actually saying, but I could see the similarities between this language and modern English.

Jake was sitting a small distance from Cerdic's fire, since he didn't have enough status to actually warm himself in the warlord's presence.

"Hey," I said softly, in English.

"Hey," Jake said back to me, shivering and blowing on his hands. "Nervous?" he asked.

"You bet," I answered.

"Cerdic always wins," Jake said, which wasn't reassuring.

"How do you know?"

"He's fought some small battles against the native Celts since coming here, and smashed 'em every time."

"This time will be different; Arthur is here."

"One man against the Saxon horde? I doubt it'll make a difference."

Jake stood up and started walking towards the dark, imposing bulk of Hadrian's Wall. I walked with him. When we reached it, Jake yelled inquiries in Latin and Anglo-Saxon, and I added a few in Common Brittonic. There was no reply, even when Jake threw stones over the top. He looked at me, shrugged, and we walked back to where Cerdic, Cynric, and some of their officers were waiting.

Jake told them, in Anglo-Saxon, that the Roman auxiliary had left the Wall. Cerdic inquired after the Knights, which Jake said had also left. Cynric asked if there would be any resistance, and Jake admitted that the locals would fight. Cerdic said that Jake and I should watch as the Saxons slaughtered 'our' people, and suggested a nearby tree.

And then Cerdic looked up and saw the Knight standing on the hill beyond the Wall. Cynric said something in Anglo-Saxon, then grabbed Jake by the throat. I swayed toward him, automatically trying to stop the abuse from happening, but Cynric shot me a warning look. I stayed where I was as Cynric demanded something and Jake choked out a reply. Cynric was squeezing so hard his knuckles stood out white under the dirt on his hands.

"Arthur," Jake mumbled. It was the only word in the conversation I understood.

"_Arthur_," Cerdic breathed, his tone thoughtful.

Cynric threw Jake to the ground, and Cerdic ordered him to fetch a white flag; he wanted to meet with Arthur. Cerdic and Jake walked half the distance to the wall, with Jake waving the white flag. Cynric looked at me out of the corner of his eye.

"Remember to run," he murmured in Latin, so that his soldiers couldn't understand.

"Why would I need to run? Arthur will win," I said, trying to project an aura of confidence that I didn't really feel.

Cynric didn't have time to reply before the gate creaked open and the Knight emerged from the billowing smoke. I recognized Arthur's armor, and a knot in my chest loosened—he really was going to stay and fight, rather than abandoning this island for the glory and prestige he would find in Rome.

"Go to the tree," Cynric ordered as Cerdic and Arthur talked. "We'll be marching soon; you should stay out of the way."

"...Try not to die," I said eventually. I couldn't say that I _liked_ this man, but he had been kind to me in his own way—he at least deserved someone wishing him well on the eve of battle.

Cynric shrugged. The afterlife he envisioned for himself—a continuous cycle of fighting and feasting in Valhalla until the world ended—wasn't terribly different from his life on Earth as a warrior; death in battle wasn't something he would shy away from. Did he have a wife or lover? Children? People who would miss him if his spirit or soul traveled beyond this world? I didn't know. Regardless, he appeared unafraid.

I went to the tree. Jake was already perched amid the branches above my head, but I wasn't much of a climber; I sat down at the base of its trunk, wrapping my cloak around me and wondering about the outcome of the battle.

The gate in the wall ponderously creaked open, which even I could recognize as a trap.

I watched the Saxons. Cerdic ordered the remnants of Cynric's footmen to go through the open gate, but put a hand on Cynric's chest to forestall him from going with them. The beating of the war-drum and the rhythmic cries of the soldiers faded into a tense silence as they vanished through the gate...

Jake screamed overhead and fell to the ground next to me. I jumped away, shrieking in surprise, and saw that there was an arrow sticking out of my fiancé's chest.

"Jake? Jake!" I said, crouching next to him.

The light had already gone out of his eyes, and there was only stillness when I checked for a pulse at his wrist and throat—Jake was dead. I stared down at his body, trying to fathom what to do, as screams began to echo from the Saxons on the other side of the Wall. I could hear the hiss of arrows arching overhead and the neighing of horses. After maybe fifteen minutes a lone Saxon stumbled back out through the gate, bloodied and disoriented. He crawled to Cerdic, babbling in Anglo-Saxon, and Braewald finished him off with a blow of his ax.

Cerdic gestured, and Cynric, the officers, and the rest of the Saxon army marched through the gate. It took a long time for every single warrior to go through—there were just so many of them! And if Cynric was to be believed, each and every one of them was a professional soldier. Merlin had gathered the warriors of the British tribes to oppose them, but I couldn't help but wonder how many of those 'warriors' were farmers and herdsmen during the summer months.

There was nothing for me to do but watch as the Saxon warriors went by, and the gate remained open behind them. I listened as, once again, the war-drums pounded and the rhythmic Saxon cries echoed through the air... and then changed as battle beset them. It wasn't the panicked screaming of earlier, though; this was just the mayhem and disorganization of battle.

_Run. Run now, before it's too late_, I thought. Get away from Cerdic before he put out my eyes!

But I couldn't. Something drew me towards that gate. I left Jake's body and crept towards it, and peeked at the battlefield from behind one of the great spiked doors...

...and saw a scene straight out of my nightmares, or else from Hell itself. Fire everywhere, the hot stench of smoke clawing at my lungs as I breathed, bodies already lying thickly on the ground. They had been hacked and gouged with weapons, or else sprouted arrows. So many lives lost!

I coughed on the smoky air and breathed through my mouth to avoid the smell of death, then saw a Celtic warrior crawling on the ground some distance away. The area between us was free of fighters; I could get to him. I hung back for a moment, hesitant—there were no such thing as designated noncombatants in the fifth century; if you were on the battlefield then you were part of the battle—but the Celt was bleeding badly and looked terribly young under all the body paint. Compassion surged in my heart, and I did the stupidest thing I had ever done in my entire life.

I sprinted onto the battlefield, falling to my knees at the wounded Celt's side. He reached for an ax lying next to him, but I grabbed his arm.

"Let me help you!" I shouted in Common Brittonic.

"Who are you?" he demanded, clutching his bleeding stomach with one arm.

"A friend!" I said. I took his free arm and dragged him upright, with him leaning heavily on me. Together, we stumbled to the base of the Wall, and by some miracle of God were not attacked by Saxons along the way. I eased him into a sitting position, using the dressed stone as a backrest. The Celt was crying.

"I'm going to die," he said.

"No, you're not," I assured him.

"Yes, I am," he told me, and pulled his arm a few inches away from his stomach. Pale loops of intestine showed against the opening where he had been wounded. My eyes widened, and my stomach flipped over and threatened to rebel at the sight. If any of that intestine had received even the smallest cut, bacteria would spill out, poison the entire abdominal cavity, and ultimately kill him. Modern surgery and antibiotics could save him, but those things were unavailable.

The Celt was right; he was going to die.

I sat down next to him and held his hand. "What's your name?" I asked him.

"Aled," he answered. "My tribe is the Votadini."

"I don't have a tribe," I said, "but my name is—"

"Claire!" Guinevere called.

I looked up. Guinevere was as I remembered her during our quest for the Cauldron of Rebirth: clad all in leather, heavily painted, and bearing weapons. The only difference was that now she was liberally splattered with blood.

"What are you doing here?" Guinevere demanded. "You need to get off the battlefield!"

"I'm trying to help people!"

"You can't—"

"_Behind you!_" Aled screamed.

Guinevere whirled around just in time to parry the savage chop of Cynric's sword. They fought together, right in front of Aled and I. Cynric had his sword and a round shield. Guinevere had a pair of long knives. Cynric had a longer reach, but he was slower. Guinevere darted around him like a viper seeking an opening to strike. Cynric warily circled her, his teeth bared in a silent snarl of concentration.

And then the worst happened: Guinevere stumbled.

She was distracted for perhaps a quarter-second, her concentration momentarily focused on her feet rather than her opponent, but it was all the time Cynric needed. His sword arced towards her, even as Guinevere saw the blow coming and jumped away from it—but too late; there was now a shallow, bleeding gash along her bare midriff. Guinevere fell to the ground, and Cynric raised his sword to strike.

I jumped to my feet, reached out, and pushed him. It was enough to make Cynric stumble to the side (there are some advantages to being a fat, heavy woman) and gave Guinevere time to leap away and then twist herself upright with her typical, unmatchable grace, but it also meant that Cynric looked at me.

This wasn't the man who had been, in a strange way, kind to me. This wasn't the man who had conversed with me by the fire. This was Cynric, son of Cerdic the warlord and a fearsome Saxon warrior in his own right—and he was no friend to me. I had denied him a victory, and now he turned a pair of rage-filled eyes on me and raised his sword.

I backed away, instinctively raising my empty hands, but Cynric didn't accept my surrender. Around us, the tide of the battle was turning. Arrows and fireballs—_real_ fireballs, not clay pots filled with gunpowder—had done their work of decimating the enemy, and the Celts now outnumbered the Saxons. The battle was drawing to a close; Saxons were being swarmed by groups of Celts, rather than fighting one-on-one duels, and some were choosing to turn and run for the gate.

Of course, it didn't matter much to me. I had thought _Cerdic_ was the one to fear, but it was really his son who was going to kill me. Backing away from the steadily advancing Saxon, I tripped over a corpse and fell onto my backside. Cynric stood over me, about to make the killing blow that would end my life.

And then he stopped, and looked out to the left.

"_F__æder!_" he shouted. "_F__æder!_"

That meant _father_.

Cynric abandoned the idea of killing me and ran across the battlefield, towards where Arthur and Cerdic were locked in a duel. Dagonet stood nearby, supporting a wounded Tristan who was clutching his bleeding side. Lancelot saw Cynric coming and raised his two swords.

"Don't kill him!" I shrieked in Latin, running after him. "Don't kill him, for God's sake!" Enough people had died today.

Arthur fell the ground, about to be killed, but then stabbed with Excalibur. I watched Cerdic freeze and stumble as the sword entered his body, then sway as Arthur pulled it out. The Saxon warlord fell to his knees as Arthur struck him again, and Arthur held him upright by the hair as the light went out of his eyes.

Cynric reached the Knights and started fighting Lancelot, and was soon surrounded by Bors, Galahad, and Gawain. I grabbed Galahad's shoulder and tried to pull him away from the Saxon, still shrieking that Cynric wasn't to be killed.

"The Hell is wrong with you, woman?" Bors demanded, dragging me away. I fought in his grip as Cynric's arm was wounded, causing him to drop his sword. Gawain looked back at me, raising his ax, then lowered it. He kicked Cynric's sword away and pulled his shield off his other arm. Cynric slowly went to his knees, holding up his empty hands in surrender.

I broke free of Bors' grip and ran to the Knights.

"Is there a reason you care about the Saxons now, lady?" Galahad demanded, his sword at Cynric's throat.

"He... he was kind to me... when I was a prisoner," I panted, pushing my hair away from my face. "It's my turn to be kind to him."

"What is going on here?" Arthur demanded. He let Cerdic's body fall to the ground behind him as he walked over.

"Do you remember him? From the lake?" Lancelot asked, nodding to Cynric.

"I remember."

"He took our ice-breaker prisoner, and now she says we can't kill him."

I started slightly, realizing that by 'ice-breaker' Lancelot meant _me_. Arthur turned his green gaze on me, which was more weary than ever now that the rage of battle had left him. I resisted the urge to fidget, feeling oddly like a child caught with one hand in the cookie jar.

"Lord," Cynric murmured. All eyes were instantly on him. "Lord, you killed my father."

Arthur looked at him.

Slowly, Cynric reached for his sword. If he had reached for the handle I think the Knights would have killed him, but instead he picked it up by the blade. Kneeling, and with Galahad's own sword still at his throat, he presented the sword to Arthur.

"Please, lord, accept this token of... my respect," he said.

Arthur took it. He could have grasped the sword by the bare handle and ripped it out of Cynric's grasp, badly cutting his hands in the process, but he chose not to and took it delicately. I watched in silence.

"Is this your surrender?" Arthur demanded.

"Yes, lord."

Arthur looked at Galahad, and the Knight removed his sword from Cynric's throat.

"You're free to go," Arthur said. He didn't spare a moment for the astonished look on Cynric's face, and instead turned away and began striding to where Merlin and Guinevere were talking.

And now all that was left to do was the cleaning up.

* * *

**The Anglo-Saxon words in this chapter** are taken from a list of "Old English Core Vocabulary" compiled by Christine Rauer of St. Andrew's University.

Okay, so this chapter was _hard_ to write; I'm not good at battle scenes. We've pretty much reached the end of the movie now, and I'll be diverging from canon and moving into the trials and tribulations of Arthur's reign as King of Britain. Are there any particular Arthurian myths you'd like to see in the rest of the story? Please leave a review with your thoughts on the story so far; your feedback means a lot to me.


	12. Chapter 12

Badon Hill smelled like blood, smoke, and an open latrine. The stench was so powerful that it seemed like a physical barrier hanging over the battlefield, which the former soldiers had to force their way through as they walked over the bloodied, trampled snow.

The wounded begged for water and aid in Common Brittonic and Anglo-Saxon. The Celtic wounded received what they asked for, but the Saxons... well, even the ones that might have recovered from their wounds had their throats slit by vengeful hands. Their bodies were then searched for valuables, and all the loot they had taken during their campaign across the island was returned to British ownership. The corpses were finally loaded onto carts and taken away to be burned.

Cynric went to his father. He did not cry, or do anything emotional at all really. He simply stood over the corpse, looking down at it. When I tried to put a hand on his shoulder he jerked away from me and glared.

I took my leave and went to Aled, who was exactly where I had left him at the base of the Wall. He was very pale beneath his blue paint and breathing shallowly. His end was near.

"We have won?" he asked.

I nodded and crouched next to him.

"My father," he panted, "is Meilyg of the Votadini. Find him, and tell him I died with honor."

"I'll do my best," I said, blinking back tears. Aled attempted a reassuring smile, but there was blood between his teeth. How could he face his own death so calmly? How could anyone? The battle was over, but the dying hadn't stopped—without antibiotics and modern hygiene, bacterial infections would set into dozens if not hundreds of the wounds sustained by the Celts on this day, and many would die in the coming weeks. This was the ugly aftermath of war that was never shown in the fantasy and historical movies I had watched in the 21st century.

I held Aled's hand. He continued to breathe, but each breath was more of an effort than the one before it. He was shivering from cold, and I wrapped my cloak around him. Slowly, his grip on my hand slackened, and eventually fell away from mine. He took one last, huge, shuddering breath, and the exhale gusted out of him with great force. I waited for a full minute, but there was no following inhale; Aled was dead.

He couldn't have been older than twenty.

An older woman approached. She tilted Aled's chin to look at his face, then sighed in disappointment. "I'm looking for my son," she told me.

"This man is Aled of the Votadini," I said.

She shook her head; Aled wasn't the one she sought.

"Do you know where I could find other Votadini?" I asked.

The older woman pointed, and I went to a cluster of Celtic warriors standing and talking on the battlefield. To my inexperienced eye they looked no different than the surrounding Celts, but later I would learn to make distinctions of tribe and status based on their swirling woad body paint.

"Is there anyone here named Meilyg?" I asked.

"I am Meilyg," a man in his probable forties said.

"Your son, Aled, is there at the Wall," I said. "He wished you to know that he died with honor."

Anguish briefly marred the man's face. He bowed his head, and when he raised it again to look at me there was only stony resolve in his expression. "Thank you for telling me this. What is your name and tribe?"

"My name is Claire. I have no tribe," I said.

Meilyg wished me well, and the day continued. Despite everything that had happened, it was still somehow only midmorning. The sun rose to its zenith as I helped carry the wounded to improvised medical stations where blood was washed away, bandages were applied, and amputations were occasionally performed. The Celtic dead were carried to a field and arranged in rows, waiting to be identified by friends and family. I washed my hands clean several times, but still developed a film of reddish-brown dried blood under my nails.

It was late afternoon by the time Badon Hill was returned to something approaching... not normalcy, but orderliness. Jols had organized a communal food effort to ensure that all of the British warriors and their entourage of family were fed, which consisted of older women manning cauldrons and ovens with the same dedication that Merlin's warriors had manned their trebuchets with earlier in the day. I got in line and received a bowl of watery brown soup and a heel of bread to sop it up with. My stomach was growling as I sat down on an upturned barrel; this was my first opportunity to eat today, and I'd been working hard.

Cynric walked past me along the road to the gate, leading an ox hitched to a cart. I finished my soup and bread, then jogged to catch up to him.

"What are you doing?" I asked, falling in step beside him.

"Cremating my father," he answered, staring grimly ahead.

"Do you want company?" I asked gently.

Cynric shot me an annoyed look. "I want a horse."

"Then wait here," I said. I went searching for Guinevere, and found her speaking with her uncle and Arthur about when each tribe would be leaving to return to their lands north or south of the Wall. I dragged her away from the conversation to ask about horses, and she directed me to Jols. Jols was now organizing burials, and directed me to the head groom of the stables. The head groom ordered his underlings to bridle a bay mare, which they did, and I finally had a horse.

And Cynric, of course, was already moving on with his oxcart when I finally returned to where I had left him. Fortunately, oxen don't move particularly fast, so it was easy to catch up to him. The surprised look on his face when he saw the bay mare made the trouble of obtaining her worth it.

"Thank you," he gritted out, as though the words pained him.

"Should I leave you?" I asked, trying to respect his grief.

Cynric shrugged. "Go where you will," he said.

I took that as permission to stay, and walked beside him along the road leading to the gate. Inside the cart was Cerdic's body, along with bundles of sturdy sticks, his ax and sword, and, more oddly, cups, combs, food, cloaks, and other everyday objects.

"What is all that?" I asked, gesturing to it.

Cynric glanced to where I gestured, then answered: "My father will not go to Valhalla empty-handed."

Ah, so the cups and combs and such were to be grave-goods. As a would-be anthropologist (albeit a linguistic anthropologist) wanting to specialize in sub-Roman Britain, I had studied Anglo-Saxon cemeteries like Sutton Hoo and Finglesham. All of the information I had learned, however, had come out of books. It felt decidedly otherworldly to be walking beside an Anglo-Saxon man and preparing to witness a cremation firsthand.

We passed through the gate. The road ended and the cart began to bounce over a snowy plain of tall, dead grass. The remains of the Saxon campfires dotted the landscape, spots of sooty gray in a trampled field, and trash from the camp was everywhere. Cynric and I walked in silence to the edge of the woods, then passed into the shadowy world beneath the trees. We walked for another hour, and finally wandered into a clearing.

Cynric stopped the ox and looked around, then began unloading the bundles of wood.

"Can I help?" I asked.

Cynric looked at me, then shook his head. "He wasn't your father," he said, and kept working. His tone wasn't mournful, and there was only grim determination on his scarred face. He took a shovel from the cart and dug a trench in the frozen ground, then arranged the wood inside it so that the bundles created a platform. He placed Cerdic's body on the platform, lying his sword on his chest and wrapping the corpse's hands around the hilt. Cerdic looked... kingly, almost.

_He doesn't deserve this_, I thought, watching Cynric move about the clearing. What kind of father carved his son's face open and then got to receive a kingly funeral from that same son? His body should have been tossed into a ditch and left for the foxes to squabble over, not this. I glowered at the corpse, shoving my hands into my armpits in an attempt to keep them warm.

Cynric unhitched the ox and led it over to the unlit pyre, then took up his father's massive ax. He chanted in Anglo-Saxon, mentioning Woden several times, and raised the ax over the ox's neck. I shut my eyes as he brought the weapon down, and heard the animal bellow in pain as it died. I knew animal sacrifice was common in these pagan funerals, but it was hard for me to watch nonetheless. The bay mare neighed nervously and tugged at the lead rope in my hand at the noise. When I opened my eyes again Cynric was cutting the ox's head off. He arranged the head at his father's feet, then broke a vessel of oil over the pyre. He gathered tinder and made sparks with two chunks of flint and steel, gradually building the fire until it caught onto the larger pieces of wood and began to burn in earnest.

The heat of the pyre grew, and Cynric stepped back. He folded his arms over his chest and glared into the flames.

"Did you love him?" I asked eventually.

"I worshiped him."

"That's not the same as love."

"He didn't want to be loved."

The fire took ages to burn down. The sun set, and the temperature dropped. The smell of burning meat filled the air as Cerdic's corpse was burned in accordance with his faith. The bay mare half-heartedly nosed at the dead grass in the clearing. The moon rose, and dappled silver light splashed down through the shadows of the tree branches around us. When the fire was a bed of glowing coals and Cerdic's corpse naught but blackened bones Cynric tossed the grave-goods into the trench and began shoveling dirt over them; the funeral was over.

When he was finished Cynric put the shovel back in the bed of the cart, and hitched the bay mare to its front. The ox collar fit her awkwardly, and she seemed uncomfortable in it. I stroked her nose, feeling her warm breath on my numbed fingers. Cynric butchered the ox's carcass, hacked the meat into manageable chunks, and loaded them into the cart. He led the horse back the way we had come, moving through the forest by the strong light of the full moon.

A wolf howled somewhere in the woods, and the bay mare startled. Cynric patted her neck and murmured to her in Anglo-Saxon. I edged a little closer to him.

"They can smell the blood, and the winter makes them hungry," Cynric said.

"Will they attack?" I asked.

Cynric shrugged. He either didn't expect that the wolves would attack us, or else was gripped by a grim fatalism with his father's death and the destruction of his army. I couldn't tell how he felt, and began anxiously watching the shadows between the trees.

"I think you really are a witch," Cynric said, startling me.

"I'm not."

"You said I would fight at Badon Hill. I did. You said I would come to know a loss greater than I could ever imagine. I did. And you have a witch's eyes."

I sighed. "They're just oddly-colored eyes," I grumbled. "They don't _mean_ anything."

"They mean you can see the future."

"For the last time, I was lying about that."

We left the trees and came to the Saxon campsite. I looked to the shadow of the oak tree under which Jake had died.

Jake!

"I need to get something," I said. "Bring the cart."

Cynric followed me without comment as I walked over to the tree. Jake's corpse was where it had fallen. I awkwardly heaved it into the wagon, with Cynric eventually taking pity on me and helping, and we continued through the gate. Fires burned at the fort, welcome little signs of civilization in the cold and dark of the winter night.

A rider rode out to meet us as we approached the fort and the small town that had grown up around it. It was Galahad.

"Lady Claire," he said, reining the horse and nodding to me. "Saxon," he said, addressing Cynric, "what's in that cart?"

"Most of an ox," Cynric answered, "and the body of her betrothed."

Galahad's face softened. "I'm sorry for your loss, Lady," he said.

"I... thank you," I said. Why was he calling me 'Lady'? I had no status.

"The Lady Guinevere asked us to look for you. It's late, and she didn't want you wandering the night. Care for a ride back to the fort?" He held out a hand, offering to pull me onto his horse behind him. I shook my head. I was too fat for chivalric gestures like that, and also...

"I need to put Jake's body somewhere I can bury it tomorrow. But thank you, Galahad."

"I'll do it," Cynric said. He looked at me like he wanted to be rid of me. "They're storing the unclaimed bodies in the paupers' cemetery behind the tannery. I'll put him there. Go, Claire."

That was the first time he had addressed me by name.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"Go," he insisted, and I went to Galahad. There were a few awkward moments as Galahad instructed me to put my foot in the stirrup and use that to step up, then swing my other leg over the horse's back. I attempted it a few times, nearly fell on all occasions, and eventually settled for walking beside Galahad's horse. It was just easier.

Galahad waited for Cynric to move beyond hearing range before speaking.

"It isn't safe for you to be alone with him."

"He's just a man, one who's lost his father and his purpose in life."

"Still, he's a Saxon. Even if he surrendered his sword to Arthur, he could still turn on us—especially you, since you can't defend yourself. Guinevere was almost frantic with worry when you weren't here at sundown," Galahad grumbled, which probably meant that Guinevere's worry had turned into a job for the Knights to do. I winced.

"Is there a place for me to stay?" I asked.

"There are a lot of empty rooms at the fort," Galahad said. We proceeded through a wide archway into a courtyard, and Galahad dismounted. He handed his horse off to a groom and walked me down a hallway full of identical doors.

"These are all our chambers," he said, opening a door. "You can take Bedivere's room."

"Bedivere is dead?" I asked. I hadn't seen him among the Knights.

"He died... six years ago, I think," Galahad said.

How could Bedivere possibly be dead? He wasn't supposed to die; he had to give Excalibur back to the Lady of the Lake at the end of Arthur's reign. I walked into the offered room, which was tiny—maybe eight feet by ten feet. There was a bed, a desk, a chair, a nightstand, a chest, and nothing else. Everything was covered in a layer of dust. I shook out the musty blankets, pulled off my boots, and crawled into the bed. There was no fireplace to warm the room, and it was very cold. I shivered, waiting for a cocoon of warmth to build up around me under the blankets.

Out of all the Knights I could remember from _Le Morte d'Arthur_ and the various stories I'd read, only seven remained. _Seven_. Had they really already accomplished all the great deeds I had read about? Or was Gawain right—the poets had simply lied about them all.

Maybe I would be able to find out tomorrow.

* * *

There was no window in Bedivere's room, and certainly no clock. I woke up sometime after dawn the next morning, clumsily braided my hair out of my face, and went searching for breakfast.

I found a plate of bread, cheese, and black pudding in the nearby tavern, which had been owned by a Roman named Quintus Petilius who'd fled south before the Battle of Badon Hill. Now it was managed by a woman named Vanora, who was apparently Bors' lover and a force to be reckoned with in her own right.

"So you're the witch," she said to me, putting one fist on her hip and squinting at me. The other arm was busy holding a fussing baby.

"I'm not a witch," I protested. "I'm a scholar of languages."

"Bors says you can see the future."

"I can't."

Vanora narrowed her eyes in suspicion, and I resisted the urge to step back.

"She is a prophetess with knowledge of the future, though her knowledge is inexact," Guinevere said, sweeping into the tavern. She still wore her blue paint, though it was smudged in places, but had chosen to don a dress and cloak rather than her leathers. She took a plate of food as well and sat down with me.

"I was worried for you last night," she said softly.

"So I gathered."

"That Saxon—"

"Is a good man at heart, I think."

Guinevere frowned. "You saved my life, twice," she pointed out. "Once at the lake and once at Badon Hill. Each time it was _from him_. Are you truly choosing to trust the Saxon?"

I thought for a moment, then nodded. Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement, and watched as Tristan fed a piece of raw meat to his hawk while seated in an unobtrusive corner. He stroked the bird's breast, and for a moment our eyes locked when his gaze flitted to me. I quickly looked away.

So we were being watched. Had Arthur ordered a watch placed on Guinevere? Or was Tristan simply paranoid? Or was it just a coincidence that we were all here at the same time and the tattooed Knight happened to be a nosy individual?

"I heard your betrothed died during the battle," Guinevere said, dragging my mind back to the conversation.

"Yes. His name was Jake."

"You have Arthur's permission to bury him with the warriors, in the cemetery on the hill."

"No, no—he doesn't... deserve that," I admitted. "But he deserves a decent burial, at least, and I'll... I'll do that today."

"I took this from the caravan, before they went south," Guinevere said, handing me my journal. I took it eagerly, checking the pages for damage.

"Thank you," I said.

Guinevere inclined her head in regal acceptance. "I know it means much to you. Now tell me... in the legends of your time, how does Arthur become King of Britain?"

I sighed. "In the legends, Excalibur was set into rock by a magical force, and only the destined King of Britain could pull the sword from the stone. Arthur did, and all the nobility immediately pledged their fealty to him."

Guinevere frowned. "Surely it can't be that simple."

"It probably wasn't. Why do you ask?"

"Because," Guinevere huffed, then continued: "Because the battle is over, and now everyone is just... just going home! We have gathered and unified the largest number of British tribesmen since Boudicca's rebellion, and now that unification is breaking apart. Once they reach their ancestral lands, the tribes are going to start fighting each other again. You said in two centuries this island will be Saxon—the only way to stop that from happening is to unite the tribes _and_ keep them together. Arthur has no tribe; he is neutral in their feuds, and thus has the ability to hold them fast. He is the destined King of Britain." She slapped the table in frustration. "And nobody will acknowledge him!"

I resisted the urge to glance at Tristan. Guinevere had unconsciously raised her voice as her passion grew, and I could feel the silent scout's gaze on us. What was he thinking?

"There's a saying in my homeland that you'll probably hate," I said, "but it's called _Rome wasn't built in a day_. You can't just expect everything to fall into place all at once."

Guinevere glared at her food. "I know," she grumbled. "But I can't see the way forward."

I shrugged and tried to think of something encouraging. "Maybe an opportunity will present itself. Don't give up."

"I never give up," Guinevere said, finishing her food. I finished mine, and wrote down the events of my capture by the Saxons and the Battle of Badon Hill. I was occupied with the task until noon, which gave Tristan plenty of time to grow bored watching me and slink away to do... whatever he did in his spare time. I'm a little bit afraid of him; out of all of Arthur's Knights, he's the most intimidating—even Vanora curbs her sharp tongue around him.

And then there was the business of burying Jake.

I found a shovel and followed my nose to the tannery, which was a collection of open-air vats full of animal brains and urine that sent up clouds of acrid steam. Behind it was another cemetery, though it had none of the grandeur of the weapon-bedecked mounds on nearby Badon Hill. This was where the paupers were buried, and the prostitutes, and all the penniless, unwanted folk. There was a stack of bodies that hadn't been claimed in the aftermath of the battle, and Jake was readily identified with his brown cloak and tunic. I dragged him by his clothes to an open spot and started to dig.

The ground was frozen as hard as iron. I chipped away at it, and was soon panting and sweating despite the winter's chill. My breath fogged before my face. It was slow going, and I was starting to despair when Cynric showed up.

"Give that to me," he ordered, gesturing to the shovel. I gave it over, and he started to dig. He was stronger than I, and the pile of dirt next to the outline of the grave grew.

"Thank you," I said.

"You fetched me a horse, I can dig a grave." Cynric replied. He dug in silence for a time, then looked up at me. "What will your betrothed be buried with?"

"His clothes, I suppose."

"Is that all?"

"Christians don't believe in carrying their possessions into the afterlife. When we die, the only things that go with us to our judgment are our deeds, good and bad."

Cynric gave me a long, slow look, then shook his head. "Did you love him?" he asked, apparently changing the subject.

This was eerily reminiscent of our conversation by Cerdic's pyre. I couldn't tell if Cynric was mocking me or voicing his own curiosity. I sighed. "I thought I did, once upon a time—and then I realized I didn't."

"He treated you poorly?"

"...He never beat me, if that's what you mean."

Cynric shrugged. "A man doesn't have to use his fists to treat his woman poorly."

His woman. The same as _his shovel_ or _his dog_. The gall of these fifth century men, thinking they owned whatever they set eyes on! But that was what marriage was in this time period: the ritualization of a woman passing from her father's authority to her husband's. Once more, my decision to stay single in the fifth century was reaffirmed.

After about an hour, the grave was the right size and deep enough. Cynric helped me lower Jake's body into the hole. I looked down at him, then made the sign of the cross. I tried to think of a speech, but couldn't; there was nothing positive or loving I could say about this man. "_Requiescat in pace_," I said eventually. Cynric shoveled the dirt back over Jake's corpse.

"Thank you," I said again when it was over. "Will you go home now?"

"Home?" Cynric echoed, then shook his head. "Cerdic burned our boats, remember... and my father's hall was never much of a home anyway. I pledged my sword to Arthur; I am his to command now."

"_That_ was you pledging your sword?" I demanded. "I thought you were... begging for your life."

Cynric sneered. "I never beg," he growled. He threw the shovel at my feet and stalked away.

I watched him go. A hawk cried overhead, stooped in midair, dived... I thought it was going to descend on something small and furry in the long grass of the cemetery, but instead it relented at the last moment and landed on Tristan's arm. He was about thirty yards away from me, standing in the shadow of a building, and would have remained unnoticed if not for his bird. How much had he seen? Why was he watching us? Or was he watching just me?

And what on Earth could he want?

* * *

**the description of Cerdic's funeral** is inspired by an excerpt of _The Oxford Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology_, published by Oxford University Press, titled "Mortuary Practices in Early Anglo-Saxon England", and written by Howard Williams. The PDF of the excerpt is available for free online.

Claire mentions in Chapter One that there are no large carnivores in modern Britain. This is correct; the English wolf went extinct in (approximately) the 17th century. However, in the fifth century the English wolf population is still going strong.

So this chapter is mostly filler, unfortunately. Claire is, as usual, being more empathetic than sensible (though her feminism might be clouding her judgment), Cynric is trying to find some acceptance among his former enemies, and Tristan is... making his own plans.


	13. Chapter 13

**A huge thank-you to Koba and Sardine for leaving such thorough and kind reviews. I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to leave your comments and thoughts about Claire's adventure so far.**

**And of course, thanks as well to the faithful d'elfe for reviewing every chapter that I publish. It really means a lot to me to have a consistent source of feedback. Everyone, if you're enjoying this story please go read theirs as well. It's titled "All Hail to the King" and is another "woman goes back in time" story... but with a fascinating twist!**

**Anyway, this chapter is the longest yet. I'm going to take a break from this story for the next few weeks to catch up on all the essays and reading I've been neglecting (bah, university), but I promise to return and continue writing after that time.**

* * *

After the initial post-battle cleanup, the tribes did as Guinevere predicted and returned to their ancestral lands.

Life at the Roman fort (which was no longer very Roman) was quiet. Bors lodged in the village with Vanora and their eleven children, Lancelot slept in the arms of whatever woman he fancied at the moment, Tristan's quarters were a mystery, Arthur had his own room separate from the Knights' quarters, and it was only Gawain, Galahad, and Dagonet who still kept the rooms they had been assigned upon their arrival in Britain. Gawain and Galahad's rooms were adjacent to one another—apparently they were cousins—and Dagonet's was not far removed. Sometimes I would catch them coming and going in the mornings or evenings. They exchanged courteous greetings with me on the occasions we met, but not much more.

Bedivere's room was now officially mine. I swept the cobwebs out of the corners, dusted the furniture, aired out and washed the bedding, organized the desk, and found a man's clothing in the chest at the foot of the bed. I traded the male clothing for female (finally, some socks) and kept my own clothing there.

My days were filled with writing. I was trying to assemble a Common Brittonic dictionary, which is a lot harder than it sounds. Every time I made an alphabetically-organized list of words, I would find new words that needed to go in between the other ones. If I had a laptop and an Excel spreadsheet to organize everything with, I wouldn't have had a problem, but the constant revisions made the pages into a mess and I had a limited supply of paper. Eventually I tore out little squares of paper, wrote the words on them and the definitions on the back, and kept them in one of the desk drawers. I could just add another piece whenever I found a new word.

Guinevere was a woman of some means in her tribe. When my need became dire, I asked her for money to purchase rags for my menstrual cycle. Guinevere disappeared for a day, and returned with two golden brooches that might fasten a cloak, a heavy gold torque, a small sack of Roman coins, and several thick silver bracelets. She gave me all this metal and said it was a 'pitiful' reward for saving her life on two occasions.

Suddenly, I had a way to pay for meals at the tavern. Initially I tried to pay with the coins, since they were more familiar to me, but I didn't really have much of a grasp of their value. Eventually I begged an audience with Vanora and showed her the heavy torque in the semi-privacy of the tavern's kitchen. The torque was made of gold wires that had been braided together to be as thick as my thumb, set with rounded garnets at the open ends. Vanora's eyes widened in shock at the jewelry, and she froze in the act of wiping flour off her hands.

"I'm a foreigner, so I don't know how much food this could buy me. Could you please tell me—"

"You could eat twice a day off of that from now until midsummer," she said, "if you want to part from it."

I handed it over immediately. Looking back, I know Vanora could have cheated me if she'd wanted to, and if her estimation of the torque's value hadn't been so generous I might have had to try my hand at haggling. Fortunately, I'd gone to Gawain and Dagonet first to get their opinion on the worth of the torque, and they'd assured me Vanora was an honest woman.

After food came clothing, but it wasn't like the shopping that I had done in the 21st century. Clothes weren't pre-made. Rather, the shopping was for fabric for the clothes, which one took home and proceeded to use to make the clothing. I tracked down Hywela (she and her husband had chosen to stay here rather than go south after the battle) and solicited her advice, and eventually Hywela rolled her eyes at my helplessness and took me to the market square. I bought more than a dozen yards of undyed linen with her help (these merchants _would_ have cheated me if they could, and it was only with Hywela's help that I didn't grossly overpay for everything), which she showed me how to cut and sew to make shifts.

A shift is... like a nightgown, basically, that one wears under one's normal dress. It served as the fifth century equivalent of underwear, since it absorbed all the sweat and oil that the body secreted and also protected the skin from the scratchy wool of the outer layers. It was made of rectangles and triangles of cloth, which Hywela helped me cut with increasing puzzlement.

"Didn't your mother teach you how to do this?" she demanded eventually.

"No," I answered. "I've never touched a sewing needle before in my life."

Hywela chuckled a little nervously, and with a flash of guilt I realized that I was alienating her again. _All_ women in the fifth century knew how to sew, even ones that had been born into the nobility like I was pretending to be. I hastily reassured her that I wanted to learn, and she showed me how to thread a needle and do some basic stitches.

After I started work on assembling the three shifts I had cut, I realized that I hate sewing. It's tedious work on a tiny scale, and there never seems to be enough light except between late morning and early afternoon. Otherwise I have to burn a lamp, which consumes precious oil that I have to pay for. My stitches were big and clumsy at first, which made Hywela _tsk_ at me in disapproval, but by the time I started work on the third and final shift I could make them small and neat.

With the shifts made, I had three linen under-dresses and two wool over-dresses, two pairs of boots, a pair of socks, and two cloaks. I mended the arrow-hole in the dress Jake had gotten for me, though there was nothing I could do about the bloodstain.

I walked around the village surrounding the fort in my free time, gathering words for my dictionary. Guinevere was right; there was nothing to _do_ now that the Saxons had been defeated and the tribes had disassembled. I had wanted to document Arthur's reign, but he wasn't a king yet.

A dog started following me as I walked. This wasn't terribly unusual—the Britons kept dogs and cats as pets, but the idea of keeping them in a fenced yard wouldn't come about until... gosh, I didn't even know. Regardless, the animals roamed loose through the village and occasionally the fort, getting into trouble as they would. This one was small, not much bigger than a Jack Russell terrier, with wiry brown fur and a kinked tail. One ear had been chewed to shreds, but the other stuck up at a jaunty angle. It was incredibly thin, its ribs sticking out like barrel hoops, and I made the mistake of feeding it one day. After that, the dog followed me everywhere. It would wait outside the tavern in the mornings, where I would take one look at that crooked wagging tail, sigh to myself, and give it a piece of liver or a bone with some meat still on it.

"Does your new friend have a name?" Galahad asked after watching this daily ritual.

"No," I said. "Maybe," I admitted an instant later. "I might be feeding someone's pet for them."

"The Saxons might have brought dogs with them, and with the army gone they're trying to find a home," Galahad pointed out. He knelt, then whistled and made kissy noises, and the dog cautiously approached him. It sniffed his hand, then seemed to decide Galahad was a trustworthy individual and flopped onto its back for belly rubs. I smiled in spite of myself.

"It's a boy," the Knight observed. He grinned to Gawain, who was standing and watching as well, and said: "Remember Yvain's lion?"

"Yvain's _what_?" I demanded.

"Yvain was one of our brothers," Galahad elaborated. "We went on a mission to Eboracum, and met a merchant there who specialized in exotic beasts. Yvain diced with him all night before we were due to return to the Wall, and he won a lion cub for himself. It slept in his bed and ate from his hands, and followed him everywhere. When Yvain died, it refused to leave his grave, and attacked anyone who came near. Its skull rests atop Yvain's sword now. Your little dog reminded me of it."

"He's not my dog," I protested.

Galahad shrugged.

I asked around the fort and village, but nobody claimed ownership of the dog. Several people recognized him, however—he was a food-stealing rascal who had shown up just after the Saxons had been defeated (maybe Galahad's theory was correct) and had quickly developed a reputation for being a miscreant. Hopefully me feeding him would decrease his unruliness, but from my limited experience with my childhood neighbors' dogs they were all greedy opportunists when it came to food. I vastly preferred cats.

It was Cynric who noticed the dog's eyes.

The Saxon had been avoiding me after I insulted him by insinuating he would do something as dishonorable as beg for his life, but he wasn't making friends at the fort. He sparred with his weapons with some of the British warriors (the Knights scorned his company in this area) and frequently ended up with more nicks and bruises than his fellows; they were going too hard on him, 'punishing' him for being a Saxon and killing their friends at Badon Hill. I don't know where he slept at night or how he fed himself, but he seemed to be doing fine physically.

After working up my courage I sought him out one day, and found him standing on top of the Wall and looking northward. There was a leather bag at his feet.

"Cynric," I said.

He looked at me. I took a deep breath and resisted the urge to fidget.

"I would like to apologize for my behavior toward you. I should have known that you, as a warrior unafraid of death, would never beg for your life. It was wrong of me to assume that."

Surprise registered briefly on his face, disrupting his usual scowl. He opened his mouth to speak, then glared as the dog trotted past me and started sniffing at the bag. He drew his leg back to kick the animal, but my 21st-century ideas about animal abuse made me yelp out a protest and protectively scoop the dog into my arms.

"Sorry," I said. "I don't really control him."

"I didn't know you had a—_Woden!_" Cynric cursed, drawing away. "His eyes!"

The dog was whining and squirming to get away. I used one hand to lift the shaggy hair around the dog's face, and my own eyes widened in surprise. The dog had heterochromia—one eye blue and one brown—just like me.

Cynric was looking at me with a mixture of suspicion, awe, and fear. "You are truly a powerful witch," he said.

"I am _not_," I huffed, setting the dog down. "This is just a coincidence. I've known this dog less than a week."

"One-eyed Woden keeps two wolves who travel with him wherever he goes. You have a dog now that follows you, and his eyes match yours."

"He follows me around _because I feed him_."

"He knows you are a witch. He wants to serve you."

"He's just a dog!"

But it was no use; Cynric was now more than ever convinced I had magical powers. He immediately gave the dog a sausage out of his bag, which the dog happily chowed down on at our feet.

"Has he revealed his name to you?" Cynric asked very seriously. I tried not to roll my eyes.

"No. Do you want to name him?" I asked.

Cynric thought for a moment. "Call him Freki, after Woden's wolf. The name means 'greedy one'."

I snorted. "He's certainly greedy," I agreed.

A hawk cried overhead, and I felt a prickling sensation as Tristan's gaze swept over me.

Freki was happy to follow me around for the rest of the day, and only departed from me at night because I refused to allow him into Bedivere's room for fear that he would defecate on the floor. Of course, a few nights later the temperature dropped even lower than usual, _and_ it was snowing, and I felt terribly guilty for leaving him to fend for himself during such a chilly winter night. I reluctantly allowed him inside, and he immediately jumped onto the bed and curled up with his tail touching his nose. What a spoiled brat he was! I rubbed his ears, moved him to the foot of the bed, and went to sleep.

And, wonder of wonders, Freki didn't defecate on the blankets during the night.

* * *

The days progressed. Dagonet roped me into helping teach Lucan not just how to speak Latin, but to read it. He had officially adopted the boy as his own, and when not following the large but gentle Knight Lucan was often playing with Bors' children. He was still a quiet child, but the trauma of losing his birth-family seemed to be fading. He had no interest in studying letters, however, and barely paid attention to me; his true passion was for his swordplay and riding lessons with Dagonet.

Guinevere lodged with Arthur now, and the two were apparently, as my grandmother would have said, 'living in sin'. They seemed happy, however, and in addition to her plans for Arthur's kingship Guinevere talked to me about a wedding in the spring. I couldn't help but be happy for her.

I could still feel Tristan watching me from time to time, though his primary attention seemed to be on Cynric. All of the Knights openly mistrusted him, and Tristan had been wounded by Cynric's father—whether the silent Knight held his vigil out of suspicion or a grudge, I didn't know.

What did surprise me (and everyone else) was that Tristan started sparring with Cynric. There was a morning where the other Knights were gathered around the central square of the training grounds, watching a single pair of combatants rather than pairing off and fighting, and I drifted over to see what was going on.

The two were poorly matched; Tristan was more than a few cuts above the British warriors Cynric had been sparring with lately, and the Saxon was barely holding his own against the Sarmatian. I watched, fascinated. Even to my inexperienced eye Tristan moved gracefully, even the most minuscule of his movements calculated and precise, his face composed and giving nothing away, his eyes seeing all. Cynric couldn't find an opening in the Knight's defense, and was struggling to evade Tristan's curved sword. After a few more moments Tristan disarmed him. Cynric looked astonished, then enraged, and finally ashamed. Tristan allowed the Saxon to pick up his sword, and they started again.

"Is he humiliating him or teaching him?" I murmured to Gawain.

"I think the former," Gawain murmured back, "but it's hard to tell; Tristan has his own reasons for doing things."

Tristan's reasons for sparring with Cynric remained unknown to me, however. I had never perceived the silent scout's presence as a benevolent one, though he was loyal to Arthur and therefore no enemy of mine. But the idea that he had actually taken a liking to Cynric seemed highly unlikely. Was he testing him through swordplay somehow? Gauging his merit? I didn't know, and my lack of knowing rankled.

The winter solstice approached, and the atmosphere around the fort and village was one of anticipation. Vanora hired more cooks to help prepare a midwinter feast, imported more wine (Rome's military presence might have been withdrawn from Britain, but its trade network was still in operation) and in general prepared for some of the busiest nights of her year. I could hear Galahad singing to himself in Sarmatian through the fort (he had a lovely tenor) and all the Knights except Tristan smiled more easily.

The holiday season made me lonely for my family. Christmas as I thought of it wouldn't be recognizable for more than a thousand years, and the word 'Christmas' itself was Anglo-Saxon—_Cristesmæsse_, or Christ's Mass—but our resident Saxon was a pagan. I felt removed from the festivities and spent more time alone in Bedivere's room.

I debated attending Midnight Mass with Arthur and the village's resident Christians, and ultimately forced myself to go despite my reservations. That was a mistake. The service was in Latin, so I could at least understand it, but the liturgy was so foreign to my lapsed Methodist upbringing that it only heightened my sense of alienation from fifth century Christianity. I slipped out of the church as the worshipers shuffled into a queue to receive communion, not wanting to go through the unfamiliar ritual of receiving the Eucharist and having a priest put something in my open mouth.

When I left the church, I could hear that the party was in full swing at the tavern. The Knights, who had their own customs honoring the solstice but who had been separated from those customs for fifteen years, were leading the festivities. They might not remember how their own religious leaders had conducted the ceremonies, but they could at least drink and feast and have a good time to honor the changing of the seasons. I entered the fray very briefly to retrieve a cup of mulled wine from a harried Vanora, but found the party too wild for my tastes and retreated to my quarters.

I worked on the dictionary through the small hours of the morning, adding all the solstice-related vocabulary that I had learned through the holiday season, and only surfaced from the work when someone knocked on the door.

Freki, who'd been snuffling and kicking in the grip of some rabbit-chasing dream or other, startled awake and whined.

"Come in!" I called.

Cynric let himself in and leaned against the doorway.

"Merry midwinter to you," he said, speaking with the care of someone who is slightly drunk and knows it. What on Earth would cause him to seek me out at this hour in the morning? It was before dawn! My eyelids were heavy; I was tempted to tell him to leave, because I wanted to sleep and because a drunk man had no business in my room—but Cynric had made a point to use a non-religious greeting for the holiday, and his level of courtesy surprised me.

"And to you," I said.

"I thought you'd be with Guinevere."

The more religious of the pagan Celts had gone off to the forest to have their solstice rituals under the supervision of a druid such as Merlin, and Guinevere had disappeared into the trees leading a heifer, an ewe, and a mare. Whether the animals were to be sacrificed or would return with her remained to be seen.

"I'm a Christian," I said. "Guinevere is honoring her gods tonight, and Christians are forbidden from paying homage to any god but their own."

Cynric nodded. He shifted in place, either from discomfort or unease, and said, "I saw you leaving the church. You seemed upset; I thought you would have gone to her. Why are you... here, doing that?" He gestured to the pieces of paper strewn about the desk I was sitting at.

"I'm working on a dictionary of the language of the Britons," I said, and then had to explain what a dictionary was.

Cynric snorted when he heard the explanation. "A poor way to celebrate midwinter night."

"I _am_ celebrating," I protested, holding up my half-empty cup of mulled wine. Despite my weight, I didn't have much of a tolerance for alcohol and only indulged on special occasions.

"Why not come to the tavern, then?"

"Oh, please, there's nobody aside from Guinevere who actually seeks out my company. I'd just be a nuisance. I'd end up sitting alone in a corner like... like Tristan."

"Tristan joined in," Cynric pointed out. "He drank with his brothers and told some eastern Sarmatian legends about the world ending to scare Vanora's children off to bed. It sounded almost as good as Ragnarok."

"Good for Tristan, then," I retorted, and realized how bitter I sounded. I changed tactics. "How are you enjoying your midwinter among the Britons?"

Cynric shrugged and looked away. "It's no Géol feast," he admitted, "it's... different."

"Géol?" I echoed.

"_Géol_," Cynric said, nodding. The word sounded almost like Yule, the pagan holiday that had influenced the western idea of Christmas.

Cynric went on and talked about how, in his childhood, a 'blessed' oak tree was found in the forest every winter, cut down, trimmed of branches, and taken into his uncle's hall. It would burn for the twelve days of the Géol celebration, and be used to cook the roast boar his father, uncle, and their oath-warriors hunted. His mother would sing, and the hall would be decorated with holly and ivy.

"Why holly and ivy?" I asked.

"They are the only green things in midwinter. Holly is the male spirit, while ivy is the female, and together they bring fertility to the hall."

"What about mistletoe?"

"Mistletoe?"

"In my country, around midwinter-time, people would hang mistletoe over doorways. If a man and woman were to meet under the mistletoe, they would have to exchange a kiss."

Cynric smiled faintly at that. "That's a good custom," he said, still leaning against the doorway. He looked up suddenly, checking for plants, and I laughed. I think he had come to me looking for someone to talk to about his homeland—and maybe I wasn't the only one feeling lonely tonight.

"In my country, we use trees too. But it's a pine tree, not an oak tree, and we don't burn them. We bring the tree into the house, stand it up with the branches and needles still, and decorate it with ornaments of glass, painted wood, and metal." I didn't feel like explaining the concept of plastic again. "We put a figurine of a star or an angel at the very top. Oh! And there are gifts! Everyone gives presents to each other, and we store the presents under the tree and wait until the morning after solstice night to open them."

I hadn't meant to ramble, but Cynric still had that faint smile on his face; maybe the wine had softened his mood. I blinked my suddenly watery eyes, and wiped the moisture away with the back of my hand.

"You miss your homeland?" Cynric asked.

I nodded. "Most of the time I don't think about it, but I do. What about you?"

"Home stopped being home after Cerdic burned my mother and uncle alive," Cynric said. I could only stare as he continued: "My uncle... challenged my father's right to rule, and took my mother as his captive—but she went to him willingly, I think even gladly, and shared his bed. My father went to their hall with his oath-warriors in the night, blocked all the doors, and set fire to the thatch. They burned."

"I... I'm so sorry," I whispered. "How old were you?"

"Just barely a man," Cynric said. "I could swing a sword, but I had never seen battle." The warmth of our earlier conversation had left his eyes, to be replaced by the barely-stifled rage that had permeated him at our first meeting—a rage he felt towards his father, I now understood.

But then Cynric blinked, and the rage dissipated. "Géol is no time to talk of such dark things," he said, trying to apologize for oversharing.

I shrugged. "In my country, midwinter is a time to celebrate familial love, but both of our families are lost to us."

"That's true," Cynric admitted. He gave me a long, considering look, then said, speaking with care, "Géol _is_ a time for celebration, though, and I don't want to be alone tonight. Would you share my bed, Claire?"

"I—I—No!" I sputtered. "I don't—" I took a breath, calmed myself, and said, "Absolutely not. I'm sure there are other women around who wouldn't mind 'celebrating' with you, though, so maybe you should seek them out." I turned away from him, twisting in my seat to face the wall opposite the doorway, and bent my head over the pieces of my dictionary as my face heated in a furious blush of embarrassment.

Cynric grunted behind me, and I heard his boot scuffing along the floor. "There is only one woman on this wretched island who so much as _speaks_ to a Saxon with kindness. I had hoped she would be willing to do more than speak."

"Look elsewhere for her, then," I snapped, but then my voice softened. "I… I don't do that sort of thing lightly, for the sake of some holiday merrymaking. Christians generally don't. We prefer to keep… physical love… within the context of marriage."

"Why? A woman who brings a child to her first marriage shows that she is fertile. Don't you want children?"

"_No!_" I said, officially losing my temper. "No, I _do not_ want children, _especially_ from you."

"Because I'm a pagan?"

"Because…" Because I was afraid of having my autonomy taken away. Because I didn't want Cynric to think of me as 'his' woman, as his property, as his sexual chattel. Because the fifth century was a violent time filled with violent men, and I had already seen the rage in Cynric's eyes when he'd raised his sword against me.

"Because you don't bathe and I think your beard is stupid," I sighed. I didn't know where to start explaining what I actually felt, and was too angry to want to try. "Now get out, before I scream for the Knights and have you thrown out."

There was a long pause where nothing happened. I stared down at the pieces of paper on my desk without really seeing them, unable to blink, unable to breathe, trembling. Then there was the sound of the door softly closing. I looked over my shoulder, then let out a great exhale of relief when I saw that Cynric had gone. I went to the door and rested my hands on the bolt, wondering if I needed to bar the door. But... no, I didn't think so. I could trust Cynric not to return now that I'd made it clear he was unwanted.

I sat down on the bed with a shuddering sigh and put my head in my hands. Freki whined and licked my face. I cuddled the dog to my chest and struggled not to cry. Damn the man and his presumptuousness! Damn him!

* * *

The morning after solstice night was quiet; almost everyone was too hungover to leave their bed before midmorning. I took Freki for his morning walk, and the only soul I saw about the village was Tristan. I waved to him, and received a scant nod of acknowledgement in return. I hoped the silent scout would train with Cynric again soon, and hand the Saxon's ass to him on a platter.

I had been hurt last night. Not physically, but I had started considering Cynric a friend as we talked about Yule and Christmas... and then he had gone and done _that_. Had that been his reason for talking to me all along? Had that been his _only_ reason for talking to me? I suppose I should have seen it coming—trust these fifth century men to interpret a woman being kind to them as being interested in having sex—but I was still wounded. It hurt to think it, but maybe Cynric was just a scarier version of Jake, who had wanted a woman to sleep with but not to genuinely love.

Well, I wasn't falling for that again.

Guinevere returned, looking tired but happy. She had stayed awake all of solstice night, sacrificing and singing to call back the sun's warmth, and had stolen a few sips of the druids' mushroom-spiked mead in between verses.

"I have seen great things in the days ahead," she told me. "The road to Arthur's kingship is now clear to me."

"What do you need to do?" I asked.

But Guinevere only smiled mysteriously at me, with a smug look on her face at being able to withhold information. I didn't let it faze me; Guinevere was naturally capricious when not devoting her energies to keeping her people and culture from being overrun by Saxons, and her coyness felt more playful than malicious.

In the following days she dispatched riders to the nearby tribes, offering the services of Arthur and his Knights as allies. Arthur was angry at that; if there had been any thought of putting his Knights' lives on the line, it should have occurred as an open discussion at the fort's round table, not in the privacy of Guinevere's head. She talked him down, however, and soon the messages came in.

Bors and Dagonet went to guard a caravan's progress between Arbeia and Isurium. They returned three weeks later with a sack of coins and a peacock's tail feather, which Bors presented to Vanora as a gift. His lover took the exotic feather reverently, marveling at its beauty, and spent the next week showing it off to everyone in the village.

Tristan went scouting for the Votadini tribe in their war against tribeless bandits. I sent well-wishes to Meilyg, but doubted that Tristan bothered to deliver them.

Lancelot acted as a bodyguard for the Selgovae chieftain during a peace negotiation between the Selgovae and the Novantae.

Gawain and Galahad were also bodyguards, escorting a young woman of high status from the Carvetti tribe to her betrothed among the Brigantes. When they returned, Gawain sought me out.

"How did you know?" he demanded, after I answered the heavy knock on my chamber door.

"Know... what?"

"I fought a man in green armor," Gawain said. "He denied me passage through a ford, and I fought him and struck his head off. His brother collected the head and said I must pay a sum of gold and silver for his brother's life. I told him that I didn't have enough money, and he said to come back in a year and a day so that we could fight again and settle the debt. What am I to do?"

"Well, obviously you go back in a year and a day and settle your debt," I said.

"Will I win the fight?"

"You will..." I said, then hesitated. "If you behave with honor, you will live," I finished.

"What does that mean?"

"If I tell you anything more specifically you might behave differently than what I have foreseen _without_ you knowing, and could come to ruin. I cannot tell you more."

Gawain reluctantly accepted that, but told tales of my prowess as a seer in the tavern. Galahad now believed in my 'powers', as did Vanora and Guinevere, but the rest of the Knights held varying degrees of skepticism. Arthur didn't believe I could prophecy at all, and chalked it up to coincidence. Dagonet seemed amused by the whole thing, and kept asking me when I foresaw Lucan actually taking an interest in his reading lessons. Bors seemed wary of me. I wasn't pretty enough to warrant Lancelot bothering to think of a pick-up line related to my 'powers'. And Tristan... well, who knew what Tristan thought?

I avoided Cynric. Sometimes I saw the Saxon watching me, and one time as I was eating in the tavern he started to approach me—but I abandoned my food and left before he could reach my table, and he didn't try again.

And then a new messenger arrived. His body paint was different than the designs I was used to seeing from the surrounding tribes, and he spoke a dialect of Common Brittonic that was difficult for me to understand. He was from the Dumnonii, the southernmost tribe of Britain and the only one that had managed to retain its independence from Rome. He bore a message from the 'king' of the Dumnonii, a man named Mark, requesting that a Knight or pair of Knights escort his betrothed from her native Ireland to Cornwall.

"What... what is the name of King Mark's betrothed?" I asked Guinevere.

"Isolde," she answered.

"Tristan _cannot_ go," I blurted out.

* * *

**For those interested in how a shift is made**, a Youtuber named Bernadette Banner (also the name of her channel) specializes in creating historical garments using methods accurate to the period of the garment (pre-industrial = no sewing machines!), and she has a lovely video where she makes a shift for herself and talks about common ways they were constructed.

Eboracum = York

_Yvain, the Knight of the Lion_, is an Arthurian romance written by Chrétien de Troyes in the twelfth century. In the story, Sir Yvain rescues a lion from a dragon, and the lion then becomes his faithful companion and assists him in battling monsters.

So the god we know best as "Odin" is called that in Old Norse, but is called "Woden" in Anglo-Saxon. Likewise, his wolves are called "Geri" and "Freki" in Old Norse... but I couldn't find what they're called in Anglo-Saxon, so I'm using the Old Norse name. Sorry about that! If anyone can find the Anglo-Saxon name for Freki, I'll gladly make corrections here. And also the name for Ragnarok.

The information about Géol/Yule is obtained from the "Thegns of Merica" blog. In my opinion, at least, reenactor groups like the Thegns of Mercia are good resources for getting a nice but not terribly detailed overview of information about a niche topic, since they're usually very passionate about their history and have a vested interest in being historically accurate.

_Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_ is a fourteenth century Arthurian tale written by an unknown author. In the original story, after Gawain strikes off the Green Knight's head, the decapitated Knight picks up his severed head and says that Gawain must return a year and a day later to receive the same blow. Rather than not returning, Gawain behaves chivalrously and lowers his head to the Green Knight's sword, but the Green Knight is so impressed by his honor that he refuses to kill him.


	14. Chapter 14

**I'm back!**

**I'm so, so sorry for the long hiatus. I don't really have an excuse beyond "university is a bitch and I have terrible time management skills." However, I got to write a research essay about the history of the King Arthur legend(s) during my Early British Literature class, so that was really fun. Thank you all for patiently awaiting this update!**

**On a separate note, there is a scene at the end of this chapter that I worry pushes against the "T for Teen" rating of this story. I don't believe it pushes hard enough to deserve changing the rating, but... well, I don't really know what to do about it. Please PM me if you think the rating should be changed.**

* * *

"Why?" Guinevere asked.

"Do you remember me telling you that the story of Tristan and Isolde is a famous romance?"

"I do now."

"It's a romance that ends in tragedy—Tristan and Isolde's love is forbidden because Isolde marries Mark, and so they die rather than remain apart." Admittedly, in most of the versions I had read Tristan had also been Mark's nephew or even son, doubly damning his feelings for his Isolde, but the core of the story was taking shape before my eyes.

"That sounds like the stuff poets enjoy inventing," Guinevere said. "I wouldn't put faith in it."

"But—"

"Tristan is the only one able to take the mission, Claire. All the other Knights are busy... well, except for Lancelot, but if this Isolde turns out to have a pretty face then Lancelot would ensure she meets her betrothed already pregnant."

I snorted at the joke, my mind returning to what Cynric had said about a bastard child showing proof of fertility rather than a lack of chastity—but it was clear that that wasn't the case here. This Mark styled himself as King of Cornwall, and kings needed heirs; a belly bulging with another man's child wasn't what he'd want to see at the altar.

"The Dumnonii are a powerful tribe; we cannot refuse Mark's request," Guinevere continued.

"Not powerful enough to have sent us some help fighting the Saxons," I retorted.

"Only the tribes nearest the threat, or else ones that Merlin held influence with, responded to our plea for warriors. The Dumnonii were too far south, and probably felt that it was none of their affair. This is why we must ally with them, so that if the Saxons come again then they will join us."

"And what if Tristan falls in love with Isolde? Even if they don't die, that would still ruin any potential alliance between Arthur and Mark."

"Nonsense," Guinevere said. "They both know their duties. Tristan will escort Isolde to her betrothed, and nothing will happen between them."

"How can you be sure?"

"Because Tristan is willing to die for Arthur, and this mission is Arthur's will."

_Is it really?_ I wondered. It hadn't been Arthur's idea to send the Knights on missions all over Britain.

"But," Guinevere said, "since you are so concerned, I will send you with them."

"...What?"

"Isolde will need a chaperone anyway; it's actually a good idea. I'll tell Tristan immediately."

Tristan had been out riding with his hawk, and we ambushed him at the stables as he removed his horse's tack and brushed the animal down. Guinevere swept into the building, delicately lifting the hem of her dress so it didn't drag through the straw scattered over the floor. I trailed behind her like an afterthought. Tristan watched Guinevere as she approached, his eyes holding the faintest note of dislike.

"Good afternoon, Tristan," Guinevere said.

Tristan inclined his head to her.

"Claire will accompany you on your mission for the Dumnonian king."

Tristan removed his horse's saddle and set it down on the wooden partition between two stalls. "No."

Guinevere frowned. "It's a matter of honor; Isolde's virtue may be questioned if she were to travel alone with a man. And she may require the services of a maid during the journey."

"She's soft," Tristan said. "She'll slow us down and need to be protected."

"Us?" Guinevere echoed.

"I'm taking the Saxon."

"Why do you need him?"

"He needs to prove his usefulness. Your maid would distract him."

"And not you?" Guinevere asked, arching an eyebrow.

The temperature in the stables seemed to drop ten degrees at that statement. Tristan and Guinevere regarded each other in silence for almost half a minute, which was the longest thirty seconds I've ever experienced in my life. At last, however, Guinevere cleared her throat and put her hands on her hips.

"Claire will go with you," she said. "I'll speak with Arthur."

Tristan turned away to remove the horse's saddle blanket; the conversation was over. Guinevere swept out of the stables the way she had come, and I gave the scout an apologetic glance before following her.

After that, it was a matter of setting my affairs in order. I gave Freki over to Lucan, knowing that Dagonet would ensure the animal was cared for if the boy became distracted. I had briefly debated taking the dog with me, but then decided against it—Tristan already believed I would be nothing but a nuisance, and bringing along a superfluous animal would only reinforce his opinion. I used some of the coins to buy a floppy knitted hat, mittens, and a scarf in preparation for the journey, and on the designated morning woke up before dawn so as to be sure that I'd meet Tristan and Cynric in the stables at first light.

Tristan was already there, of course, saddling his horse with his hawk perched on one of the rafters overhead. It gave a shrill cry when I entered, which made the scout look up.

"Good morning," I said.

Tristan gave me and my accouterments a cursory glance, grunted once in what might have been approval, and went back to what he was doing. I hefted the oiled leather bag that held my journal and a few other belongings, suddenly foreseeing the lack of stimulating conversation this journey would entail. It was going to be a long, silent ride to Cornwall...

"Tristan," I said, making the scout look up again, "I don't know how to saddle or bridle a horse."

The look I received after imparting this information was definitely disapproving, and I resisted the urge to cringe in embarrassment. Ultimately, a yawning groom showed me how to saddle and bridle a chestnut mare with a white blaze between its eyes.

"Does she have a name?" I asked.

"No," the groom answered. "Some of the Knights name their horses, but this one is just an extra we keep around for labor or—"

"What are you doing here, woman?" someone demanded in thickly-accented Common Brittonic. I looked up, and saw that it was the messenger from the Dumnonian king. Swirls of woad covered his exposed skin, and he wore a fur vest and plaid trousers. There was a slender golden torque around his neck, and two thick gold armbands on his right arm. At his belt was a sword resembling a Roman spatha.

"I am to be the maid of King Mark's betrothed for the duration of the journey," I said.

The messenger grimaced in annoyance. "My cousin does not need a _maid_," he grouched, "an extra woman to protect will only slow us down. Is this your doing, Knight?"

Tristan looked up just long enough to give the messenger an indifferent look, then went back to tending his horse.

"Wait, wait—Isolde is your cousin?" I asked.

"The _Lady_ Isolde is my father's sister's daughter, yes," the messenger said. "I am Morholt, son of Eoghan, of the Laigin tribe. Who are you, woman?"

I was getting tired of being addressed by my gender. "My name is Claire, daughter of William. I have no tribe."

Morholt looked askance at that, but made no immediate comment. Cynric walked into the stables with his usual frown in place, and my eyes widened in surprise—he had shaved! The braided beard that dangled from his chin like a rat's tail was gone, replaced with stubble. Our eyes met for a moment, and Cynric self-consciously rubbed his chin before being directed to a big black gelding by one of the grooms.

After the riding horses were saddled and bridled, our saddle-bags packed, and a pack-horse burdened with food and supplies, we set out. Apparently the plan wasn't to ride to Cornwall—instead, we would head west along the Roman road that ran roughly parallel to Hadrian's Wall until we reached Solway Firth, which was a watershed of several rivers that emptied into the Irish Sea. Morholt had a ship waiting for us there, and we would sail across the Irish Sea, past the Isle of Man, and to Ireland. In Ireland, we would sail to a small port town on the edge of Laigin tribe territory that was just "the town of the hurdled ford". Isolde would be there, and after retrieving her we would board the ship once again and sail back across the Irish Sea, but now angling southeast. We would land in Cornwall and travel overland to King Mark's stronghold, where we would be witnesses for the wedding and guests for the following feast. After that was over and done with and minus Isolde's company, we would travel north along more Roman roads back to Hadrian's Wall.

It seemed simple enough.

The Roman road was, of course, cunningly paved and even, and the day (though cold) was bright with pale winter sunshine. The horses clattered over the cobbles, their breath steaming before their noses, and had an easy time traveling. We moved much faster than when Owenna, Guinevere, Blodwyn, and I had traveled on foot through the clinging undergrowth of the northern forest. Tristan often scouted the way ahead with his hawk, leaving Cynric, Morholt, and I behind. He returned infrequently, spoke some small words with Cynric or Morholt, and would then ride away again. I think he was disused to being a leader and would have preferred a lonely voyage accompanied only by his hawk and horse.

"Why was this mission given such a Knight?" Morholt asked Cynric when Tristan was away. The Irishman (which he must be, given his accent and his relationship to Isolde) had rebuffed my attempts at conversation and was steadfastly ignoring me, since I was a mere woman and therefore knew nothing worth talking about.

"Tristan is more than able," Cynric said.

"But he barely speaks and spends all his time afield. What if we are attacked by brigands while he is away?"

Cynric gave the Irishman an unimpressed look. "Then we fight," he answered, and patted the hilt of his sword.

"So the two of us and that useless baggage—" I think he was talking about me, "—are to fend off, what, six lawless men? A dozen? More?"

"If we must," Cynric answered.

Morholt frowned at that, and the conversation died. Cynric seemed uninterested in talking to me, and I had no idea what to talk to him about anyway, so after Morholt had explained our travel plan to me I was left struggling to come up with something to break the silence. Ultimately, I couldn't think of anything, so the day stretched out quietly before us.

Here is something I hadn't known before starting this venture: horseback riding hurts. After the first hour of riding, my legs felt a little stiff. By the second hour, my knees ached. By the third hour it felt like nails were being driven through my kneecaps and my thighs were filled with burning molten lead. The sun, my only way of measuring time, moved far too slowly across the sky, and all I could do was grit my teeth until I fancied I could hear them creaking in my jaw. I was the only woman present, and the men already saw me as a burden; I refused to complain and confirm their belief in my weakness. However, I was grateful when Morholt called a halt for a midday meal, and more collapsed out of the saddle than dismounted—which caused the Irishman to chuckle, damn him.

"First time riding?" he asked.

"Yes," I admitted.

"You'll get used to it," Morholt said, then turned to Tristan. "I hear Sarmatians are all but born in the saddle. Is that true, Knight?"

Tristan looked up from watching his hawk gulp down some small, furry rodent it had caught in the field of winter rye growing alongside the Roman road. I think he would have preferred to just eat in the saddle and keep riding, and was annoyed with us all for slowing him down—but, as usual, his face was utterly unreadable, so if my suspicions were correct I had no way of knowing.

"Sarmatians have always been great horsemen," he said eventually. Morholt waited for an elaboration, but none was forthcoming, and after perhaps ten minutes the midday meal was finished and I had no choice but to climb back onto the chestnut mare's back.

"Claire," Cynric said, already sitting atop his gelding. I looked at him.

"It would be easier for you to sit side-saddle," he said. "It won't hurt as much."

I shook my head. "If I don't sit normally then I'll never acclimate to riding."

Cynric shrugged and looked away, and I managed to get myself into the saddle without embarrassing myself. What I had said was true—my body would adjust to this, if given enough time—but I also didn't want to take Cynric's suggestion because… well, because it was _Cynric_ and I just didn't want to.

The rest of the afternoon was a grueling test of my pain tolerance.

We came to a village of the Carvetti several hours before nightfall. It was just a collection of thatched hovels surrounding a small wooden hall and enclosed by a stockade. A lookout hailed us at the gate, and a small band of warriors pointed spears and arrows at us, but a few villagers had been warriors at Badon Hill and recognized Tristan as one of Arthur's Knights.

The gate was opened, and we were welcomed into the village. Our horses were taken care of, and we were ushered into the headman's hall. The hall was a single long room, dominated by a roaring hearth over which a boar was roasting. The dirt floor was covered with rushes that needed to be changed, and the thatch overhead was stained with smoke. Mice scuttled along the rafters overhead, and dogs went from person to person begging for scraps of meat. The headman's oath-sworn warriors were seated on benches to either side of several long tables, but as guests we were given the honor of sitting not just at the headman's table but close to him as well. Aside from the headman's wife I was the only female taking my ease—all of the other women present in the hall were busy serving platters of meat and refilling cups of beer and mead.

Nobody bore a weapon larger than the knife they used to eat (forks hadn't been invented yet), but Tristan and Cynric still looked uncomfortable at being outnumbered six-to-one by the headman's oath-sworn warriors. Morholt seemed unworried, however, and immediately tore into the food that was offered by the attending women. Brittonic conversation flowed around us, and Cynric, who spoke Latin and Saxon but not Common Brittonic, was clearly frustrated at not being able to understand what was going on. I leaned my head towards his and muttered translations.

"You must be careful traveling these days," the headman told Tristan after they exchanged pleasantries. "There are many bandits about—Saxons, I think, who fled Badon Hill as the tide turned against them and so escaped our swords."

Tristan nodded.

"Why did you bring a Saxon into my village?" the headman asked, putting his empty hands on the table to show that he had no interest in a fight.

"He's tame," Tristan assured him. I hesitated, then quietly translated. A muscle in Cynric's jaw worked as he heard the words.

"So is a wolf-cub taken from its dam by a hunter," the headman said. "But one day, the 'tame' wolf will remember its wild heritage and savage the hunter who reared it. You can never be sure of a Saxon's loyalties; they keep no oaths and are as faithless as snakes."

"If he turns, I'll kill him," Tristan said with a shrug. I paused. The scout's voice had his usual quiet resolve, with absolutely no emotion, and I knew he was telling the truth. I thought of Tristan and Cynric's sparring, and knew then that it had been a test of how quickly and easily the scout could kill the Saxon. Bringing Cynric along on this mission was another test, of whether or not Tristan would actually need to do so. I glanced at Cynric, who had heard the exchange and was waiting for me to speak.

"The headman says Saxons are faithless," I began, "Tristan says he'll kill you if... if..."

"If I prove a traitor?" Cynric prompted, and I nodded, watching him. Cynric stared into the distance for several moments, thinking as he sipped from a horn of beer (I had received several odd looks for wanting mine watered down), and then seemed to resolve himself.

"I would do the same," he said, and began eating again as though that were the end of the matter. I watched him, but Cynric ate with a deliberation that suggested he wanted nothing else on his mind but the food in front of him, so I left him to it.

The evening wound on. A bard was brought forward and sang a song praising Arthur and the British warriors of Badon Hill, but even my untrained ear could tell that the man had little talent for singing. He trembled on the higher notes and stifled coughing at the lower ones, and even the headman seemed a trifle embarrassed at the performance. The roast boar was reduced to bones for the dogs to gnaw, and men and women trickled out of the hall as they sought rest in their own dwellings.

The last of the attending women laid woven rugs over a portion of the rushes covering the earthen floor, and we were invited to sleep. Cynric stopped me from setting my bedroll down randomly, instead lightly tugging my arm to guide me to a spot between himself and Tristan.

"What are you doing?" I demanded, but softly.

"I do not want Morholt to lay beside you. His loyalties are unproven."

"So are yours," I retorted, and Cynric recoiled as though stung. He released me and turned away without a word.

When we had all arranged ourselves we were in a rough line that was, from left to right, like so: Cynric, Tristan, me, Morholt. The fire was banked to a bed of faintly-glowing coals, the lamps were doused, and the hall of the Carvetti village settled into its nighttime darkness. Dogs whuffled in the shadows, which reminded me of Freki, but even they settled down after a time. Sleep was a long time claiming me, however; I had grown accustomed to the privacy of Bedivere's room, and felt awkward sleeping wedged between two men I barely knew.

After perhaps a quarter hour I heard a rustling on Morholt's side. The shadows in the hall were deep, but I turned my head and saw him reaching under the cloak he was using as a blanket. There was a faint clinking that I think was his belt buckle, and then the slide of cloth, and—and then—

Morholt turned his head, made eye contact with me—and smiled. My head whipped to the other side, my cheeks flaming in a blush in the darkness at being caught as an unwitting and accidental voyeur. I don't think he smiled because he harbored some secret affection for me, or because he truly desired me, but just because I was a woman and a woman watching him masturbate pleased him. I crawled out of my bedroll, picked it up, and deposited it on Cynric's other side a good four feet away from the Saxon.

Damn it all, but Cynric had been right—for the wrong reasons, but he'd sensed or guessed or somehow known that Morholt wasn't someone to sleep next to. I curled up in my bedroll with my back to the men, trying to rationalize everything. I had a very modern notion of privacy, since private rooms for individual people didn't become a normal architectural feature of non-aristocratic homes until the Regency era. Before then, most dwellings were like this hall: a vast central space, where _everyone_ ate and drank and slept. I was the alien in this environment; probably it would have been more tactful, more appropriate, for me to have turned a blind eye to Morholt's doings and pretended to sleep until he was finished. But I hadn't, and Tristan and Cynric had almost definitely heard me changing position.

After a time I forced myself to calm down and clear my mind, and managed to drift into a fitful sleep.

So ended the first day.

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**Thanks for reading! If you have the time, I'd love to hear your thoughts about Claire's adventures so far. Also, what Arthurian legends would _you_ like to see explored after we finish the Tristan/Isolde romance?**


	15. Chapter 15

**Koba: thanks for reviewing! Yes, I deliberately wrote the Green Knight as being different from the normal legend — that's because I wanted to keep close to the movie canon and have magic at an absolute minimum, so rather than the Green Knight picking up his own severed head he just has a brother to challenge Gawain to a rematch.**

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The next day I was roused by Tristan standing over me and nudging my leg with the toe of his boot. Once he saw my eyes open he moved away and went about his morning business. I sat up and braided my hair; it was before dawn, and the rest of the village had only just started to stir into wakefulness.

Breakfast was a rudimentary affair of unsweetened porridge and yesterday's bread, which I ate while hurriedly scribbling down the previous night's events. Morholt watched me with naked suspicion as I did so, clearly unused to the sight of a woman wielding a quill. I was secretly pleased at unsettling the Irishman, though I pretended to ignore him.

Tristan wanted to disappear from the Carvetti village like a curl of mist on a sunny morning, but allowed me to linger long enough to thank the headman's wife for the hospitality she and her husband had shown us. It would have been impertinent or at least odd for a woman to approach and address a male host directly, but gratitude needed to be demonstrated. After that, we prepared the horses and set out once more along the Roman road.

Perhaps forty-five minutes of silence passed. The sun peeked over the eastern horizon, its rays causing the frost to glitter upon the ground. Our horses trod over it, their hooves slipping over the slick cobbles of the road. I was bundled in my cloak, scarf, hat, and mittens, and still felt cold. At least it wasn't snowing and the wind was still. Tristan looked back over his shoulder at us, then cantered away to scout the distance.

I urged my horse next to Morholt's. "Would you tell me of the Lady Isolde, Morholt?" I asked, watching Tristan's figure grow small with distance.

Morholt looked at me for a moment, considering his response, then answered: "she is beautiful, and clever for a woman. She can sing and play the harp."

He shrugged after that, as though there was nothing else about his cousin worth knowing. And indeed, there probably wasn't—from his perspective. A woman of this era needed only two things to be a queen: royal blood in her veins and the ability to bear male children for her husband. She wouldn't need an education or any practical skills, since she would have servants or slaves to attend to her needs and would not be consulted on matters of state.

"Why was the match arranged?" I asked.

"You ask too many questions," Morholt grumbled, and would have spurred his horse ahead of mine if Cynric's voice hadn't checked him.

"I would like to know as well," the Saxon said, though I couldn't see why. Was he asking for my benefit?

Morholt huffed, clearly annoyed by the conversation. "Our tribe, the Laigin, have long raided Cornwall for treasure and slaves. When Mark of Cornwall sent emissaries begging for peace, we sent the messengers back where they came from—in pieces!" There was a cruel delight in Morholt's smile, and Cynric nodded his understanding and approval. I, remembering Badon Hill and the pieces of bodies I had seen with my own eyes, just felt sick. Morholt continued: "when the Lady Isolde came of age, she had many suitors from the surrounding tribes, so her father, my lord Aengus mac Lorc, set the bride-price high. Mark of Cornwall sent more emissaries… but this time they arrived bearing an offer of marriage, for he alone could pay the bride-price. Now, with Lady Isolde married to Mark, my lord Aengus cannot go raiding into Cornwall—but the treasure Mark offered for my cousin's hand is so vast that a marriage-alliance would make up the lost plunder."

As I'd suspected, Isolde had had no say in selecting her partner. I pitied her—but at the same time, I could see no way to save her. This marriage had to take place. Sure, it was unfair to Isolde, but it would stop the Laigin raiding the Dumnonii and make the Dumnonii allies of Arthur.

"How old is Mark?" I asked.

"Fifty-some years," Morholt answered. "I and the druid Maelodor traveled to Cornwall to broker the match and receive the first half of the bride price; I saw the king with my own eyes."

"And he is honorable? He treated you well?" I asked, when really I wanted to ask if he would treat Isolde well.

"He is old and tired, and wants to buy peace with his neighbors rather than keep his spears sharp," Morholt said, and spat onto the road to show his opinion of such policies. "But we were guests in his hall and suffered no injury or dishonor," he grudgingly amended.

Well, that could mean… anything. I couldn't envision a happy future for Isolde, though neither was her soon-to-be misery set in stone. A sudden sour taste flooded my mouth as a revelation hit me: I called myself a feminist and wanted equality for women, but here I was partaking in a mission to aid in a woman's forced marriage and oppression. Some beacon of liberty I was!

Tristan returned to check on his three fellow travelers, and Morholt wanted to know if the way ahead was clear. The Knight gave him a curt nod of affirmation but didn't speak, and his hawk landed on his arm and surveyed us all with wild golden eyes. For a time Tristan rode with us, and I found myself watching him.

Tristan and Isolde… it was certainly a famous romance. I could think of three different poets who had written their versions of it, as well as a movie from my own time. And yet, looking at Tristan, I couldn't envision the laconic scout as a romantic figure. He was too grim, too unfeeling, too silent to be anything but a terrifying warrior. What kind of woman would Isolde have to be to capture the heart of such a man—and would Tristan be worth the effort of such a capture?

But Morholt had mentioned that Isolde was beautiful; maybe it would just be lust that would cause Tristan to deviate from the mission. Or maybe the stories were true and a love potion was somehow involved. Or maybe nothing would happen, and the poets were liars as Guinevere believed, and I was worrying myself to an early grave for nothing.

As the morning progressed, clouds massed in the north. By early afternoon the entire sky was as gray as a sword-blade and the air had a strangely metallic smell.

"Snow," Cynric pronounced, and indeed, as the light began to fail so the first flakes began to fall.

We didn't find a village before dusk, and so were forced to camp in the open beside the road. Tristan radiated discomfort at our exposed position, but made no comment and vanished into the surrounding woods to do… something. Morholt tended the horses as I gathered deadwood under the trees.

"Don't, Claire," Cynric said, shaking his head at me as I emerged from the trees carrying an armful of sticks.

"What?" I asked.

"We cannot have a fire."

"But it's cold!"

"And the headman in the village said there are bandits about. We can't light a beacon for them to find us by."

I grimaced. "I should have thought of that," I said, and tossed the sticks on the ground.

We ate a frugal meal of oatcakes and dried meat, then bundled ourselves in as many layers as possible and hunkered down close to the horses. Tristan returned, and a watch was divided between the men. As a woman (or possibly just a non-warrior) I was excluded and allowed to sleep through the night, but that didn't mean much—it was a shallow, fitful sleep, worsened into a series of catnaps by the cold.

I was already awake when Tristan approached to rouse me in the gray pre-dawn light, and managed to saddle and bridle the chestnut mare unassisted. My fingers were numb, and that fact combined with my inexperience meant I took the longest to be ready, but I managed to finish without asking for help.

Which didn't stop Tristan from brusquely brushing me aside to check my work, since I was apparently a helpless child in his eyes and couldn't be trusted to do anything related to horses. If it had been Cynric or Morholt I might have snapped something, but I was still too wary of Tristan's silent menace to say anything rude to his face. He gave me a small nod to show everything was in order, and then we mounted up and kept riding.

It was a long, cold, silent day. We passed a village in the early afternoon, but found none as the dusk deepened into nightfall and so camped once more beside the road. I was tired and miserable, and found myself longing for Bedivere's room—the straw-stuffed mattress there might have been lumpy, crackly, and utterly inadequate compared to the comfort I'd experienced in the 21st-century, but at least it had been off of the ground and out of the wind. I missed Freki's silent devotion, too; the little mongrel had clearly enjoyed my company, rather than just tolerating me as Morholt and Tristan did. As for Cynric… sometimes I would look up and find the Saxon watching me, and our eyes would lock briefly, and then we'd both look away.

The days blurred together, and my hands were too cold for me to want to unstopper my inkwell and go through with the effort of writing. I wrote nothing on the third day. On the fourth day we crossed a river via a stone bridge of Roman construction. I asked Tristan what the river was called, and he said the Romans named it _Itouna_.

"That's just the Brittonic word for water," I pointed out, frowning.

Tristan, eloquent as ever, shrugged. I puzzled over the name for some time, then imagined some Roman geographer of earlier centuries pointing to a river and asking to know what it was called. Some confused Briton might have rolled their eyes—stupid Romans, of course that was _water_ they were pointing at!

On the fifth day, we reached a town—not a village, but a real town. The Romans had called it Luguvalium, which was a Latinization of the Brittonic name Luguwalion. It was the seat of the Carvetti tribe's power and where their central authority was located, and was coincidentally watched by the looming presence of the largest fort along Hadrian's wall: Petriana, named after the much-lauded cavalry cohort that had been stationed there prior to the Roman withdrawal from Britain.

"Were they Sarmatians?" I asked Tristan.

Tristan shook his head.

We rode into town. It was clearly a Roman town, not a British one—the streets were paved and arranged in a distinct, orderly geometric pattern, and many buildings were made of stone in the Roman style. However, the people walking the streets were definitely Britons, some with painted skin and some without, all of them dressed in warm wool garments of British cut and decoration. We passed through a market square where a herd of nervously bellowing, hairy cows were being loudly auctioned, and then reached an inn.

The inn was much similar to Marius' villa: a two-story stone building arranged in a square-cornered U-shape around a central open place, which served as the yard where guests dismounted from their horses or carriages. Part of the lower story was a stable, but there was also a common room and kitchen. The upper story was sectioned off into rooms for guests.

"Are we going to sleep on real beds tonight?" I asked, and I couldn't keep the longing out of my voice. A groom took the chestnut mare to a stall and began brushing her down.

"With the gods' blessing," Morholt said, smiling. There hadn't been any incidents like the one in the Carvetti village, but I now kept my distance from the Irishman when possible and was careful to never be alone with him.

We walked into the common room. Tristan, our charismatic leader, hailed the innkeep with his usual friendliness, which made a guard at the door begin walking towards our party with deliberate casualness. Tristan requested dinner for four, which I had expected, and then a single room for the night, which I hadn't. I'd been hoping for my own room, and at this point was willing to sacrifice a few of my feminist ideals of equality to lean on my companions' sense of nobility towards the so-called fairer sex—but apparently this wasn't to be. Regardless, the price the innkeep named for these services made Tristan freeze. I think the scout would have just walked away at that point and said we would all sleep in the woods again, but that was the moment Morholt took over and started the haggling.

Annoyingly, he was good at it. He insulted the establishment by saying he had heard the food wasn't good and the bedding had lice, which made the innkeep bristle with indignation, and a few sentences later the price was lower. Morholt went on, doling out just enough praise to stop us from being thrown out on our behinds while insinuating that four meals and a single room really wasn't worth the price we were being offered—and weren't there other inns in Luguwalion where we could get a better deal? Eventually, Morholt wore the innkeep down to almost half of the initial offer, which he accepted. He and the innkeep clasped hands to seal the agreement, and then Morholt led the way to an empty table and we all sat down.

"Well done," I said. It had definitely been an impressive performance.

Morholt smirked, and his smirk grew in size as we were served cups of frothy ale and platters of roast mutton. The mutton was tough beneath the (admittedly excellent) garlicky sauce it was served with, but I finished my serving. The ale was stronger than I would have liked, and I was stifling yawns by the time our empty platters were taken away. Morholt left our table to flirt with the serving girls, with mixed results—some of them liked his looks, but others were wary of his accent because Luguwalion was near enough to the western coast for the locals to have strong feelings about Irish pirates. Tristan sat with his back to the wall and turned an unsettling stare on anyone whose gaze lingered too long on our party, and Cynric was keeping quiet.

"Is something wrong?" I eventually asked him. He hadn't spoken a single word since we entered the inn's common room.

Cynric looked around, then spoke in a low voice meant only for my ears: "how happy do you think all these Britons would be—" he gestured to the other patrons ranged around the common room with the hand not holding his cup, "—if they heard the language of their former masters spoken with the accent of a recent invader? I would rather hold my tongue than have the whole tavern up in arms."

I hadn't seen Cynric as the type to shy away from a fight. Was it because he was outnumbered here and didn't expect Morholt or Tristan to help him? I was curious enough to use only a modicum of caution in my phrasing: "Some men would call that cowardice."

Cynric grimaced into his cup. "Those men don't have a helpless woman traveling with them. With you and eventually Lady Isolde to look after, no honorable warrior would—" he broke off into a string of Saxon curses.

Across the common room, Morholt had bowed to a seemingly receptive serving girl and introduced himself fully, perhaps trying to impress her with his status. Someone from a neighboring table had heard him and decided to take offense. This person jumped up and proclaimed to the entire common room that warriors from the Laigin tribe of Ireland had raped and murdered his sister during a raid on a British coastal village. Others chimed in with other wrongs they had personally seen or heard of Irish pirates committing, and all of a sudden it was Morholt vs. a room full of angry, partway-drunk Britons. One person darted forward and grabbed Morholt's arm as his hand strayed towards the handle of his eating knife, and the Irishman twisted in his grip to throw the man over his hip and onto a table, which splintered into pieces. Then the brawl started in earnest.

I was frozen in my seat, gaping at the sudden violence. Cynric got to his feet, took my arm, and all but dragged me to the foot of the stairs.

"Go to our room, bar the door, and only let me or Tristan in," he instructed.

"But—"

"_Go, Claire!_" Cynric snarled, then followed Tristan's lead and waded into the brawl. I hesitated for one moment, and then one of the British men looked at me—he was a greasy, rough-looking sort who held a fighting knife in one hand, and as soon as I felt his eyes on me I fled up the stairs. I did as Cynric ordered and barred the door, then felt around through the dark until I found the single lamp in the windowless room. I lit it with some effort, and by its feeble, flickering light wrote down the events of this and the previous days. My hand shook at first, but the effort of writing calmed me and steadied my hand. The tumultuous noise from downstairs went quiet, and I found myself staring at the door.

What would happen if Cynric and Tristan were hurt? What would happen if they died? How was I supposed to take care of myself without their protection? During all my time in the fifth century, I had always been under someone's protection and guidance—how was I supposed to manage if that was taken away? My mind was running through disaster scenarios at breakneck speed, and I startled when a heavy knock on the door sounded.

But it was Tristan's voice. "Open the door," he said, and I did so. Tristan had blood on his knife and on his knuckles, but seemed unharmed. So did Cynric, who carried his naked sword in one hand and used his other arm to keep Morholt upright. The Irishman was leaning heavily on the Saxon, his steps slow and stumbling and his head hanging low.

"Is he—" I began.

"Concussion, probably," Tristan said. "Someone broke a chair over his head."

What I had learned in the aftermath of Badon Hill surged to the fore. "Did you check for a skull fracture?"

Tristan gave me a reproachful look—of course he had checked, he had been fighting on this island for fifteen years and more than knew what to look for when it came to head injuries. I grimaced and looked away in silent apology.

Morholt laid down on the room's single bed with a soft, involuntary moan of pain. Tristain wiped his knife clean on his pants, then laid down on the floor using his pack as a pillow and his cloak as a blanket; he was probably uninjured. Cynric sheathed his sword and rubbed a hand over his face.

"Are you hurt?" I asked, speaking softly for Tristan and Morholt's sake.

"Just bruised," the Saxon murmured. He sat down on the floor with the deliberate care of someone whose movements pained him. "Four people died in that fight."

My eyes went wide. This wasn't a battlefield; killing people in peacetime had _consequences_, and I wasn't familiar with the law codes of sub-Roman Britain. "What will happen?" I asked.

"We will find out tomorrow," Cynric said, and laid back on the floor. He and Tristan were on one side of the bed, giving me the relative privacy of the floorspace on the other side. I finished writing and extinguished the lamp, then curled up under my cloak. The floor was hard, but after more than half a week of winter camping I was mostly just pleased to be warm.

I drifted into a sleep that, though deep, was plagued by troubled dreams.

We weren't dragged out of our room during the night by whatever passed for law enforcement in Luguwalion, which was promising, but when Tristan went downstairs to the common room the next morning the innkeep presented him with a bill for the broken furniture. Also awaiting the scout was a trio of Carvetti guardsmen and a magisterial representative wearing a wolf-fur cloak.

The representative told Tristan that _galanas_ was owed for the lives of the people killed in last night's brawl, and that we would not be allowed to leave Luguwalion until _galanas_ was satisfied. Tristan went back upstairs, took the sleeping Morholt's gold armbands, then gave them over to the representative—and just like that, we were free to go. I was baffled. I had been bracing myself for a go-round with some type of medieval criminal punishment (the stocks, maybe, or torture at worst), but apparently homicide was seen more as a financial transgression than a moral one; compensation to the victims' families was certainly owed, but nothing more. That was _galanas_. It varied from person to person—women were valued less than men, but _galanas_ for a chieftain's wife was more than triple that of a male serf, while a king's _galanas_ was downright unpayable—and there was a similar term, _sarhaed_, that referred to the compensation owed for crimes less serious than murder/manslaughter such as rape or destruction of property.

"It is the same for us," Cynric said when I asked over breakfast. When he said "us" he meant Saxons. "Our word for it is _weregild_, but it's the same."

"But it's not fair," I found myself saying, my tone straying dangerously close to a whine. "It might as well be just buying the right to commit a crime if all that's owed is monetary compensation. And what of the difference between rich and poor? A noble could commit a murder and walk away for the price of a finger-ring, but a poor man might lose everything."

Cynric shrugged. "Then he shouldn't break the law."

I sighed. "The _point_ is that there should be equitable punishments for crimes so that both rich and poor are equally deterred."

Tristan was watching us from the other side of the table. "You sound like Arthur," he said, which was… I couldn't tell if it was a compliment or not. And it was so rare for _Tristan_ to join a discussion (with me, anyway) that Cynric and I both looked at him as though he'd grown a second head.

"What do you think, then?" I asked, after several moments of surprised silence had passed.

Tristan sat back. He looked down at his eating knife and turned it over in his hands. "Spiders don't make webs in such a way that they give themselves the chance of being trapped alongside the flies," he said, then looked up at us. "We benefited from that."

"Yes," I admitted. The 21st-century American justice system might be more equitable than that of 5th-century Britain, but if this situation had occurred under it we would all still be in jail cells awaiting our lawyers. Cynric took my concession as me giving up the argument, and stood up from the table to bring Morholt downstairs.

The Irishman was slow-witted and dazed from his concussion. We gave him some bread for breakfast, helped him mount his horse, then readied ourselves and set out. We no longer traveled parallel to the Wall, which continued westward for perhaps another day before ending at a fort called Maia that overlooked the shallowest section of Solway Firth—too shallow for the vessel Morholt claimed to be awaiting us. Instead, we angled south upon a different Roman road, plunging into a hilly countryside. There were more forts here, now deserted and sad-looking, but rather than defending against an invasion of wild northern Celts they had been meant as symbols of Roman power to curb any potential rebellions. The road avoided the heights of the mountainous area that would come to be called the Lake District in modern England, which disappointed me slightly—when planning my vacation with Jake I had wanted to tour the Lake District as well as Hadrian's Wall, but ultimately had been forced to choose between them—and instead veered westward towards the coast.

We traveled for six days along this southwest road. Morholt, after recovering his senses, was a bitch throughout; he did not complain of his head hurting thanks to his warrior's pride, but was deeply insulted by Tristan taking his armbands to pay the galanas without asking his permission. Thus, he acted even colder to Tristan and Cynric—and to me, by extension. He was full of nothing but snide comments and snippy retorts, and that coupled with his mistrustful, considering glances wore us all down and shortened our tempers. Tristan spent more and more time scouting, and I could practically hear Cynric grinding his teeth—but because of Morholt's role in brokering the marriage we couldn't just cut his throat in his sleep, abandon the body, and tell Isolde a tragic accident had befallen her cousin. Alas.

Tristan now seemed leery of the perils of civilization, and under his leadership we camped in the wilderness. I heard wolves howling in the surrounding hills, and on the single occasion Tristan deemed it safe enough to have a nighttime fire Cynric had to chaperone me into the woods to collect deadwood. We were perhaps a stone's throw from the camp, but it still felt awkward to be 'alone' with the Saxon; I felt like I should say something, but had no idea what, and so a long, uncomfortable silence stretched out between us as we both pretended not to watch each other.

Eventually, when my armful of sticks was nearing fullness, Cynric broke that silence: "Claire, there's something I must know."

"What is it?" I asked, my mind suddenly flickering through interpersonal disaster scenarios. If this turned out to be like the last time the Saxon and I had had a moment alone on midwinter's eve…

"Why were you chosen to accompany us on this mission?" he asked, which was an incredibly reasonable and normal question not at all related to all the… the _whatever_ that was going on between us. A knot in my chest loosened.

"Guinevere wanted Isolde to have a female companion during the journey, so that she wouldn't be traveling alone with a group of men."

The Saxon nodded slowly. "So there is… nothing you have foreseen coming to pass?"

I hesitated, thinking of the famous romance we might all be about to witness. I must have hesitated too long, because Cynric narrowed his eyes. I didn't have the energy to think of a lie, and more than that I was tired of just worrying and worrying all alone. I wanted, perhaps even needed, a confidant, and Morholt and Tristan were out of the question—that left Cynric, who could if nothing else could provide a fresh set of eyes to the 'problem' of Tristan and Isolde.

"I will tell you," I found myself promising, "but another time; listening ears might be lurking nearby." I jerked my chin in the direction of the camp. Cynric nodded in acquiescence, and we returned to the site Tristan had picked for us to spend the night. I warmed my toes close to the fire we made, and fell asleep listening to the far-off howling of the wolves.

On the morning of the seventh day we crested a hill and saw Alauna. It was a coastal village and trading port that had once been protected by a Roman fort, but the Romans had gone and left the village defenseless against seaborne raiders. It appeared unravaged, however, and there were several decent-sized ships tied to the pier. Morholt became impatient as we neared the town and spurred his horse through the streets, almost cantering. We had no choice but to urge our own horses after him as he headed towards the shore. He dismounted at the edge of the pier and went to a ship that had a carving of a spread-winged swan upon her prow, and hailed the people on the deck in what was presumably Irish. They called back to him, and people I assumed to be the crew emerged from a hatch leading belowdecks. One of them was… odd-looking.

He had deeply tanned skin, which I suppose wouldn't be out of character for a sailor, and a single braid of long black hair that, combined with the epicanthic folds at the corners of his eyes, made him look _very_ Mongolian. The man was staring at Tristan, who noticed and started staring back.

All of a sudden, Tristan called out to the man in a language that bore no resemblance to Latin or the Celtic tongues. The man replied in what sounded like the same language, then let out a bellow of laughter and leaped onto the dock. Tristan dismounted his horse and approached him. The two men hugged, which made my eyes widen in shock. Even Morholt looked askance.

"Lanval, what is going on?" the Irishman asked.

"I have found my brother!" the Mongolian-looking man, Lanval, said, pulling away from Tristan but keeping one arm around the scout's shoulders. He grinned. "Seven years ago I left the Wall, and I never thought to see any of my brothers again. But the gods are kind and have reunited us."

Morholt, for some reason, scowled.

"_You_ are Sarmatian?" I asked.

"Yes, yes," Lanval said. "I am Lanval of the Lazyges, formerly of Sarmatia, now a sworn warrior of Lord Aengus mac Lorc of the Laigin tribe of Ireland. Tristan, is this woman your wife?"

The scout snorted and shook his head, and I wanted to melt into a puddle of embarrassment. But Lanval seemed eager to share his story and insisted on doing so over lunch in Alauna's single tavern: he had come to Hadrian's Wall with the other teenage (or even younger) Sarmatian boys, had been trained, had begun going on missions… and then had fallen in love. A young druidess orchestrating a (ultimately unsuccessful) resistance movement captured his heart, and Lanval deserted the Wall to follow her to her Irish homeland, where he had found employment. He was overjoyed to see Tristan again.

"I cannot wait for you to meet my Nimue," Lanval. I all but coughed my bread out of my mouth at the name. "She waits in Ireland with Lady Isolde, and will accompany us to Cornwall."

"Us?" Cynric asked.

Lanval cast the Saxon a glance. He had heard news of the Saxon invasion and its subsequent defeat, and seemed confused that a former enemy was now among the honored few chosen for such an important mission.

"My men and I," the former Knight clarified. "I lead a warband of twenty-six picked men who will be Lady Isolde's honor guard."

Cynric nodded, though whether he was pleased or displeased by the news was impossible to tell. I was happy: a warband of twenty-six men plus Lanval, Cynric, Tristan, and Morholt ensured that any roving gang of bandits would think twice about attacking us.

After lunch, the ship's crew loaded the horses onto the ship. This was an arduous task that involved blindfolding the animals and coaxing them up a wide, sturdy gangplank, then doing a haphazard alteration of the hatch leading belowdecks so that a shallow ramp large enough for a horse could be fitted. Also, all of the supplies stowed below had to be rearranged to accommodate the animals. We lost the rest of the afternoon and evening to this endeavor, and Morholt was practically frothing at the mouth with impatience. He wanted to just sell the horses and cast off, but Tristan and Lanval were adamantly against such a course of action. The horses we had brought from our starting point at Hadrian's Wall (even my nameless chestnut mare) were all specially bred from stock brought from Sarmatia, and were therefore irreplaceable—moreover, Tristan's mount was a trained warhorse, which only increased its value.

The next morning, however, we were ready to disembark. I remember it as a cloudless winter day, the sky overhead blue as could be and the wind cutting like a knife through all my layers. The Irish crew offered a prayer to the sea god Manannán, which sounded like the name of the Brittonic god Manawydan. Cynric muttered his own prayer to a god called Neorth. He seemed nervous as we pushed away from the pier and Alauna began to grow small with distance behind us.

"Winter is not a time for sailing," he told me. "The seas are rougher, and storms are harsher and more frequent."

I gestured up at the cloud-free sky. "I think we'll be fine."

The Saxon was unmoved. "For now," he said.

I decided I liked sailing—as a passenger. The salt-smelling breeze was invigorating, and the motion of the deck rolling underfoot was something I managed to adjust to rather quickly. I wouldn't have fared so well if I'd needed to clamber up the mast to furl and unfurl the sail, but such a thing was not among my required duties. I sat in an out-of-the way corner and wrote in my journal, listening to the cry of seabirds and the unintelligible Irish of the crew talking amongst themselves.

Tristan, however, was miserable. He looked queasy as soon as he set foot on the deck, and a few minutes after leaving Alauna he was hanging over the railing and vomiting. Morholt was snickering behind his back, apparently pleased at seeing the aloof scout brought low by something as minor as seasickness, but sobered as soon as Lanval snapped something to him in Irish. Both Lanval and Cynric seemed mildly sympathetic to Tristan, but both the Sarmatian and the Saxon were stoic fifth-century men who believed in just enduring suffering—which left me.

I cautiously approached Tristan, and rested a hand on his shoulder to get his attention.

The scout twisted his head just enough to glare at me, and I snatched my hand back.

"It… it helps to look at the horizon, or so I've heard," I said. Tristan made a pained noise, looked at the horizon for a moment, and then had to lower his head to resume emptying his stomach. I withdrew, trying to give him what little privacy there could be had while aboard a sailing ship.

We sailed for the rest of the day, and approached the Isle of Man in the afternoon. We docked in a small harbor town of Duboglassio, where the locals spoke a dialect of Irish that was nonsense to me and apparently close to nonsense to Lanval, Morholt, and the Irish crew. This was the midway-point in our sea journey; it would be one more day before we reached Ireland and Isolde. We took on food and fresh water, and shoveled out the waste that the horses had produced. Duboglassio was too small for an inn, so we slept on the ship. As a woman I was permitted the safety (and warmth) of sleeping belowdecks, and I was about to curl up in my cloak against the curved wall of the hull when Cynric tapped my foot with his boot.

The Saxon sat down next to me, so near that we were all but touching, and leaned his head close to mine. "Tell me of your vision," he murmured.

"It's not a _vision_," I grumbled, "It's just…" I wanted to tell him the truth, that I was from the future and knew such things only from scattered writings, but for some reason couldn't. "It's just something I _know_. Tristan and Isolde will fall in love, and I fear everything will come to ruin."

There was silence for a moment. There was no light belowdecks (a lantern would be too much of a fire hazard) except for the open hatchway, and Cynric was little more than a silhouette to my eyes. We weren't the only ones down here, and there was a small possibility we were overheard by members of the crew—but if so, we were speaking Latin, which only a few would have understood.

"Are you certain?" Cynric demanded.

"No," I replied. "I pray I'm wrong."

"If the Spinners have tied the thread of Tristan's life to that of Isolde, there is nothing we can do," the Saxon said with his usual fatalism. "We cannot see the tapestry Fate weaves for us, except in hindsight—and except for you."

"My foreknowledge does nothing but make me worry for the people I care about," I whispered into the dark. "It makes me feel powerless, not powerful."

There was another beat of silence, longer than the first.

"I never imagined a witch feeling powerless," Cynric murmured, so quiet that I could have almost imagined it. "Goodnight," he said, louder, then rolled over so there was space between us. He apparently went to sleep like that, and after either minutes or hours I followed suit.

The second day of sailing was one of clear skies and boredom. There was little to write about, for which I suppose I should be grateful, and we reached Ireland in one piece. "The town of the hurdled ford" was larger than Duboglassio, situated in a small natural harbor, and awaiting us at the end of the pier was a woman.

Imagine her: tall, slender as a willow branch, with hair blacker than raven feathers falling to her waist and wearing a long gown that was so white it blazed like a star under the morning sun. I couldn't see her face clearly from this distance, but I already knew it would be heart-breakingly beautiful.

Tristan, still pale from seasickness, approached the railing and rested his hands on it, gazing at the figure in white. Morholt came to stand next to him.

"Isolde," the Irishman said.

Tristan nodded, not looking away from the woman at the pier.

"Fuck," I muttered.

* * *

**"Itouna" really is the Brittonic word for 'water.'** It's also the Roman name for the River Eden, which flows through Cumbria into Solway Firth.

Luguwalion = Carlisle

Alauna = Maryport

The (simplified) concepts of _galanas_ and _sarhaed_ are Welsh legal terms that predate the final English conquest of Wales, and therefore might be indicative of what kind of legal system existed in sub-Roman Britain. However, Welsh law was only written down (across several different manuscripts with regional variations) more than 500 years after this story takes place, so nobody actually knows what British tribal laws were like. I'm working from the book _Welsh Medieval Law_ by Arthur Wade-Evans, which is free to read online via the HathiTrust digital library. I WANT to read _The Welsh Law of Women_ (2nd edition) by Morfydd Owen and Dafydd Jenkins, but all of the versions I've seen seem to be around 30 USD and I'm not sure I want to spend that much money on a fanfiction project. There are free-to-read excerpts available via Google Books, however, so I'm mining those for material for later chapters.

_The Lay of Sir Launfal_ was written by Marie de France in the 12th century, and stars Sir Launfal (English spelling: Lanval), a poor but honorable knight in King Arthur's court. He becomes the secret lover of a fairy princess, and swears to remain loyal to her. Because of his promise to the fairy princess he spurns the advances of Guinevere, which enrages Guinevere to the point that she accuses him of dishonoring her. During Sir Launfal's trial, the fairy princess appears and whisks Sir Launfal away to Avalon, where he lives in happiness for the rest of his days. In this story the fairy princess = Nimue and Avalon = Ireland.

(Anglo-Saxon) Neorth = (Old Norse) Njord, the sea god

Duboglassio = Douglas ...According to Wikipedia, "Duboglassio" is from "Early Celtic", which is _not_ a language. On the other hand, it's the only pre-Viking name for Douglas (or any town on the Isle of Man) I could find. Also, if this fic took place _just a few decades later_ I could have written about Claire meeting St. Maughold and/or St. Patrick, but alas, this is not to be.

Spinners = the Norns of Nordic myth, who spun the threads of peoples' lives and cut them short at the appointed time. I couldn't find their Anglo-Saxon name.


End file.
